Shiloh...Ohio

On occasion, we in Shiloh, Samaria, Israel would get mail that was intended for Ohio. Why? Well, I at first thought because our zip code, 44830, was similar to Ohion's. But that's just part the answer.

There really is a Shiloh, Ohio and from the new report below, it sounds just like our village life:-

Shiloh mulls shortage of staff for digging jobs
By
SCOTTIE SMITH
News Journal correspondent

SHILOH -- Village Council continues to discuss how to comply with an Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirement that a minimum of three workers be on site for jobs that require digging. The village has two.

Village Administrator Rick Reeder told council Monday he had confirmed the three-worker OSHA rule. Council, which earlier decided against hiring a third full-time employee, discussed part-time alternatives, but did not make a decision.

Reeder also reported Quality Lines will begin work this week to complete the village's electrical upgrades.

Also, smoke testing of sanitary sewer lines will begin Aug. 9. The testing is a
requirement of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In other business, council:

• Heard that Lee and Mary Chronister will be Grand Marshals of this week's ox roast parade.
• Approved an agreement to deposit public funds with the Citizen's Banking Company for five years beginning Aug. 24.
• Accepted a $290 donation from Mount Hope Lutheran Church to buy mulch for the park.
• Agreed to advertise for bids for repairs and renovations of the police outpost
building.

Council will next meet at 7 p.m. Aug. 12.

Reflecting on Israeli Justice

An open letter to Judge Ayala Procaccia


(from my neighbor here in Shiloh)

".. he hoped for justice but behold oppression; for righteousness but behold a cry". Yeshayahu (5:7)

My name is Moshe Belogorodsky. I decided to write this letter after I read of your decision to allow the promotion of Niso Shaham to the position of deputy police chief of the Jerusalem district. The same Niso Shaham who, during the expulsion from Gush Katif, gave the following orders to fellow police officers:" I am a pro in dealing with these Orthodox Jews. S**t on them. Let them burn. Hit them from the waist down. I will f**k the hell out of them". Those orders were directed against demonstrators in Kfar Maimon.

After a video of the episode was broadcast on channel 10 national news, Shaham was brought before the police disciplinary court where he was reprimanded and deprived of pay for six days. The police court apparently decided that this was punishment enough for his words which insulted a whole segment of Israeli society. And now you, a judge of the Supreme Court of Israel, have demonstrated your apparent concurrence with the police court's decision. Indeed, you went much further, by deciding to allow Shaham's promotion(!) based on the fact that Shaham expressed regret over his words. In your decision you speak of the need to forgive in the following terms: "a candidate's failure in the line of duty does not necessarily disqualify him from promotion on the count of breaching the public's trust. Public trust is a term that also recognizes penitence, asking forgiveness and seeking answers." You even go so far as to scold the petitioners against his promotion for their "inability to forgive".

All the flowery words notwithstanding, allow me to question the justice of your decision. And if you ask who am I, a simple citizen of this country, to dare question the decision of the Supreme Court, allow me to remind you.

I am the father of Chaya, the 14 year old girl who was arrested during the expulsion. It was you who decided to keep her under arrest until the end of proceedings against her, all because one police woman claimed that Chaya insulted her by saying "shut up and arrest me". And because of your concern for the honor of that one police woman my child spent 40 days in Maasiyahu jail. You kept her in jail even though she too expressed her regret and promised not to make the same mistake again. We asked you to release her to full house arrest so that she would not have to sit in jail ( p.4 par.8 of the protocol). Unfortunately, you could not find any room in your heart to "recognize penitence", nor to accept my child's "asking for forgiveness". To the contrary, you sent my child to jail because she " insulted a police officer in a crude way" (p.5 par.10). It appears you thought that her words were infinitely cruder than those of Shaham. You spoke of the " outright lack of respect for the police officer" as another justification for keeping Chaya in jail. It seems that Shaham's lack of the most basic respect for the citizens of this country is much less "outright" in your eyes.

There is one more sentence in your decision to keep Chaya in jail - a sentence which you must have forgotten when dealing with the Shaham case. " ...her behavior does not leave me a choice except to isolate her from the center of her ideologically motivated activities (meaning Chaya's home - M.B.) which swept her into committing the crime"(p.6 par.11) I ask: Is it not fitting to "isolate" Niso Shaham from his "center of activities which swept him into committing the crime"? Is it possible that in any normal country a high ranking police officer be allowed to get away with these types of statements? Is my child's "crime" more heinous in your eyes than Shaham's truly criminal orders to perpetrate a pogrom against the demonstrators in Kfar Maimon? Lastly, how can you justify on any grounds, moral or judicial, your outright discriminatory treatment of my child versus the treatment Shaham benefited from in your court?

It seems to me that it is no coincidence at all that you handed down your decision regarding Niso Shaham on the eve of Tisha B'Av - the day we mourn the Destruction caused by baseless hatred.

Allow me to end my letter with this: We were "privileged" with Niso Shaham's apologies. We are still waiting for yours.

Forgotten History

A theater riot in 1849:

On 10 May, Forrest appeared in The Gladiator, but to a half-empty Broadway Theatre: his hardcore fans were busy elsewhere. The box office at Astor Place had been more successful at keeping tickets out of their hands this time, however, and despite some groups of catcallers Macready’s Macbeth ran all the way to the end of Act V, but by then the building was surrounded by a mob of 15,000 people. They were a volatile mixture of recent Irish immigrants furious with the English for their mismanagement of the potato famine, and diehard American nativists equally furious about the same mismanagement because it was flooding their city with Irish Catholic immigrants; but whatever their ethnic and gang loyalties all of them seem to have felt that the wealthy patrons of the opera house were unacceptably flouting the will of the people by giving Macready another hearing after the stormy verdict passed earlier in the week. They had been bombarding the building with paving-stones and trying to break through the hastily barricaded doors for some time when, pushed back against the walls so closely that there was no room to mount a bayonet charge, the troops assigned to its defence opened fire with rifles. At least 25 people were killed that night, and around a hundred injured; a small boy was crushed to death at the protest meeting in City Hall Park that followed the next day.

That was the Astor Place riot here.

Look Forward, Not Backward

Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes

...it is not at all certain that the measures now being taken are indeed the right ones.

For one thing, little if anything has been done to fix Israel’s top-level decision-making machinery, which the Winograd commission determined to be neither well constructed nor capable of providing proper support to the prime minister.

...Suffice it to say, an Israeli equivalent to America’s National Security Council does not appear be on the horizon.

In its preparations and exercises, the Israeli military seems to be focusing heavily on fighting the Syrian army. Units as large as brigades are being put through their paces. Infantrymen using paintball, with similarly-equipped female soldiers playing “the enemy,” are taught how to fight in built-up areas. Tanks and armored personnel carriers drive about, raising clouds of dust.

It is as if Israel, instead of preparing for the future, is determined to fight the 1973 Yom Kippur War all over again. Indeed, the spectacle of anti-tank ditches being dug in the Golan Heights reinforces the sense of déjà vu.

While such preparations are going on, there still does not appear to be a solution to the problem of short-range unguided missiles.

...In other words, a year after the war with Hezbollah, there is no indication that the Israeli military — or anybody else in the country, for that matter — knows how to ensure that the Israeli home front does not collapse under the hail of rockets that may soon rain down on it. And let’s not forget that Syria, unlike Hezbollah, has missiles capable of hitting just about anywhere in Israel, and some of those missiles are armed with chemical warheads.

Armies, like football teams, can only be as good as their opponents, especially in the long run. Perhaps the main lesson of last summer’s war was neither tactical nor strategic.

FARK's Comment - What Could Go Wrong? Iran

Iran admits it has enough centrifuges to make a nuclear bomb, but insists it would never use one, because that would be suicide.

Let's see here: Muslims, bomb, suicide... what could possibly go wrong?

In reference to this.

They'll Cheat at Everything

A L'Oreal commercial featuring Penelope Cruz broke industry rules because the actress was wearing false eyelashes, the advertising watchdog has decreed.

The advert for the firm's 'Telescopic' mascara claimed the product could make eyelashes "up to 60 per cent longer". According to the Advertising Standards Authority, however, the advert misled because it did not make clear Cruz was wearing some individual false lashes.

L'Oreal said it was "common industry practice" to use artificial lashes. But it said it would "fully comply" with the ASA's new requirements in its future advertising campaigns.

Source

Alan Johnston - Where Are You?

It's been three weeks since the BBC's man-in-Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston, was released after being abducted by Arab freedom fighters or whatever.

This, I think, is the last news report on him.

When will he speak up (and out?) on the 114 days of captivity?

Is he writing a book on his experiences?

Many people labored for his release and identified, as I did, with his plight, despite misgivings about some of his reporting. When do we hear from him?

Blogosphere Critique

The Cult of the Amateur is a broadside attack on Web 2.0, a term we may hastily define here as that growing sector of the internet which serves mainly as a platform for user-generated content, including sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Typepad, Blogger and YouTube. The main thrust of his argument is that all this home-made content - blogs, podcasts, amateur videos and music - is an inadequate replacement for mainstream media. It may be a harmless, even occasionally enriching addition, but we can't have both, because the former is swiftly killing off the latter. Thanks to Web 2.0, newspapers, record companies, movie studios and traditional publishers are on the verge of extinction, he says.

- - - -

Keen claims he isn't really going after the bloggers so much as the influential idealists who actually run Web 2.0. "My real targets are what I would call the libertarians on the right and the left," he says. To Keen, the "democratised" web is actually a form of oligarchy, the product of an unholy alliance between old counterculturalists ("fat guys with beards, basically") and free-market fundamentalists (he offers Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, as an example). The former group, he says, reject "all forms of external authority"; the latter believe "that if you just leave everything alone it will work itself out".

One inviolable tenet of this twin-track libertarian ethos, according to Keen, is a misplaced faith in the integrity of the amateur - the citizen journalist, the self-published author, the mash-up musician - and a generic distrust of expertise. One does indeed find this attitude mirrored all over the net, where people frequently post sayings such as "Amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic". Mainstream media is seen as corrupt, compromised, lazy and fearful, while Web 2.0's army of amateur content-generators is dynamic, honest, worthy and wise. In Keen's estimation this idea isn't just absurd - it's dangerous. "For these Generation Y utopians," he writes, "every posting is just another person's version of the truth; every fiction is just another person's version of the facts."

Source

Negotiating Rules

Moshe Sharon, Professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University, has passed around these rules for Middle East negotiations:-

Never be the first to suggest anything to the other side. Never show any eagerness "to conclude a deal." Let the opponent present his suggestions first.

Always reject; disagree. Use the phrase: "Not meeting the minimum demands," and walk away, even a hundred times. A tough customer gets good prices.

Don't rush to come up with counter-offers. There will always be time for that. Let the other side make amendments under the pressure of your total "disappointment." Patience is the name of the game: "haste is from Satan!"

Have your own plan ready in full, as detailed as possible, with the red lines completely defined. However, never show this or any other plan to a third party. It will reach your opponent quicker than you think. Weigh the other side’s suggestions against this plan.

Never change your detailed plan to meet the other side "half way." Remember, there is no "half way." The other side also has a master plan. Be ready to quit negotiations when you encounter stubbornness on the other side.

Never leave things unclear. Always avoid "creative phrasing" and "creative ideas" which are exactly what your Arab opponent wants. Remember the Arabs are masters of language. Playing with words is the Arab national sport. As in the market, so also at the negotiating table, always talk dollars and cents.

Always bear in mind that the other side will try to outsmart you by presenting major issues as unimportant details. Regard every detail as a vitally important issue. Never postpone any problem "for a later occasion." If you do so you will lose; remember that your opponent is always looking for a reason to avoid honouring agreements.

Emotion belongs neither in the marketplace nor at the negotiating table. Friendly words as well as outbursts of anger, holding hands, kissing, touching cheeks, and embracing should not be interpreted as representing policy.

Beware of popular beliefs about the Arabs and the Middle East -- "Arab honour" for example. Remember, you have honour too, but this has nothing to do with the issues under negotiation. Never do or say anything because somebody has told you that it is "the custom." If the Arab side finds out that you are playing the anthropologist he will take advantage of it.

Always remember that the goal of all negotiations is to make a profit. You should aim at making the highest profit in real terms. Remember that every gain is an asset for the future, because there is always going to be "another round."

The Arabs have been practising negotiation tactics for more than 2000 years. They are the masters of words, and a mine of endless patience. In contrast, Israelis (and Westerners in general) want quick "results." In this part of the world there are no quick results, the hasty one always loses.

Unter Gunter

Remember last years Gunter Grass scandal? That he was a member of the Waffen-SS? (*)

Well, here's a bit from a new book review I found:-

He gets lost behind Russian lines. Wandering in the woods, exhausted, hungry, and afraid, he hears someone nearby. Friend or foe? Nervously he intones the beginning of a German folk song about little Hans wandering out "into the wide world" alone, "Hänschen klein ging allein...." To his immeasurable relief the hidden stranger responds with the rest of the line, "...in die weite Welt hinein." Had the other man been a Russian, we would probably have no Tin Drum. Instead, he's an avuncular German corporal, who advises the now seventeen-year-old Grass to take off his Waffen-SS jacket. If he is captured, the Russians won't take kindly to those double runes.

But Gunter took them off figuratively for 60 years after that.

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

(*)

On August 11, 2006, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported on its Web site that Grass had been a member of the Waffen-SS. Grass had revealed this himself in his then-forthcoming memoir, and had confirmed it in an interview with the FAZ published in full the following day. This was the literary-political equivalent of a nuclear explosion. The negative response in Germany was sustained and often savage, as can be seen in a documentation produced by Grass's publisher, Ein Buch, Ein Bekenntnis (A Book, A Confession). A critic said Grass would never have won the Nobel Prize for Literature had this been known, and a politician called on him to give it back. Joachim Fest, the well-known historian of Nazism, commented, "I wouldn't even buy a used car from this man now."

Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "I would have wished that we had been fully informed about his biography from the outset." Columnists accused him of making the revelation to get publicity for his new book. Henryk M. Broder, an acerbic commentator, wrote that Grass had clambered his way up from membership in an "elite troop"—a satirical reference to Grass's own description of how he probably viewed the Waffen-SS as a sixteen-year-old—to being a Herrenmensch of the cultural industry.

The Gawker References

Someone has provided a link to the Judeophobic material at Gawker that had been mentioned in the debate over Wonkette and other "Jewish-owned" sites that some people feel are not antisemetic:-

Some Holocaust limericks pulled from Gawker

BY FRACTUREDACETABULUM AT 07/20/07 03:28 PM

(ahem)

Adolf Hitler murdered some Jews
At the time, it didn’t make news
Ever since then people been bitchin’
From subways to soup kitchens
About those god damned Jews

BY MINDBLING AT 07/20/07 03:35 PM

There once was a really bad man
who wanted his nation Aryian
so he fired up the stove
and whoosh, in the Jews go
never to be heard from again.

BY HEYTHEREKILLER AT 07/20/07 03:50 PM

The Germans all say it was not in,
their country. Now who would’ve thought’n,
They’d skin all the Jews,
And make them into shoes,
Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten!

BY PROCRASTINATOR, ESQ. AT 07/20/07 04:24 PM

A Dutch Jewess was kept in an attic,
To hide her from neighbors fanatic.
But the Nazis, it seems,
Grew wise to her schemes,
But Anne, must you be so dramatic?

from one thread, alone

Humor

This is not, I repeat, this is not Mobius.

Request for Legal Assistance against ISM

New York Attorney Andrew Nitzberg has asked for assistance in locating witnesses. Please read the following and help out if you can.
=====================================================

My name is Andrew Nitzberg and I am a trial attorney practicing largely in the state of New York. I am the lawyer responsible for the trial victory of Lee Kaplan against Mohammed Salahi earlier this year. (The action was for private speech by Salahi that cost Lee Kaplan several jobs. The 'free speech' defense fell flat because this was for private, not public, speech. The court records and decision are posted online by the California court administration.)

I am filing for an injunction against George Mason University for their upcoming conference of the 'International Solidarity movement', the US wing of Hamas.

I need assistance in the form of evidence. Of course there is lots of evidence to show that the ISM is a violent, Jew-hating group which directly assists terrorists in coming to their targets and similar activities. But i need evidence admissible in a court of law.

No one will be required to appear in court or to travel (except me -- the pro bono (unpaid) lawyer).

1. I need statements from persons who have directly observed ISM personnel stating things like, "Kill the Jews", "We support the resistance of the Palestinian people even when they engage in Terrorism" , "We work with Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza", "We work with Hizballah".

Persons attending the Michigan ISM conference in (I think) 2002 would be very helpful here.)

2. I need statements indicating that persons have observed ISM persons beating up persons who do not support the agenda of the ISM (this should be very easy- they beat people up every year at these things.)

3. I need statements that persons have personally observed ISM personnel with weapons or transporting weapons. Statements from ISM personnel that admit to such contact with weapons are excellent.

4. There are people looking for the 'perfect plaintiff' for the action. (We have general students (2) eager to sign on, but we would like the 'perfect plaintiff' -- who is a student (BA or grad)/administrator/faculty member who has a family member in Israel. (The Virginia criminal code makes this a very attractive plaintiff). Any
Jewish person is eligible because we can shake the family tree and find some relative who is living in Israel.

Thank you for this help. Every terrorist is my enemy because I am a friend to freedom. I am hopeful that I will find many friends in this effort.

Andrew Nitzberg

ajnn@msn.com

Mob as in Load (not Toad)

My last (*) comment left over at Jewschool aka Mobius:-

Mob - for a religious/ethnic/cultural group that has produced countless comedic entertainers in the last 100 years alone, i am utterly shocked at the humorlessness of the greater jewish community.

Me - so, that's it. that's all you've got to say? Not even 'whew, i'm tired of all this'? No apologies, no attempts at 'well, perhaps i did sterotype you', no nothing? All you have to say is that the Jews are guilty because a few of us don't have the same sense of humor as you do and worse, you claim that the "humor" we see as latent, under-the-surface, cute Judeophobia is really not antisemitic in any form and that even if it is, I/we can't organize to combat it, and if we do, we're causing more antisemtism while only you of the Left know how to combat real antisemtism.

That sentence is too long but someone around here is too short on understanding.

Go on over.

(*) Really, my very last comment - he's thrown in the towel but defiant in his insistence I'm a bigot and "a militant Zionist" (militant? no, I don't use a gun).

Dear Mob - you're right, er, correct. Go on with your life (but believe me, you do way more blogging than I do). Of course, not being able to deal with my life existence, my outlook on life, and, in all humbleness, the reality that your outlook and approach is mostly wrong (and dangerous to Zionism and Jews, maybe even more so than the Judeophobes you can't see), you simply malign, demonize, and diss me rather than applying your make-belive rules of liberalism, Chofetz Chaim, etc. And you know that The Möbius strip is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. Oh, how so applicable to your one-dimensional denounciations of me.

Police Violence at Eitam

From Laura Ben-David's account:-

People were coming and going. Early on we met a distraught woman on her way back. She said that they had made it to the end, and her husband was holding an Israeli flag. One soldier allegedly pushed her husband, and then it seemed to be open-season on this man as a number of other soldiers jumped in to attack him, after which the man was arrested - all for holding an Israeli flag.

A bit further on I watched four border policemen drag someone away. I had no idea what he had or had not done to warrant such excessive force. Maybe he was passively resisting? Or maybe he was a dangerous criminal? That seemed rather unlikely though.

Moshe, a 15 year old from Chashmonaim, had a very difficult time. When he and his friends reached the final hill of Eitam, he spoke to some of the soldiers there, explaining the importance for every Jew to settle the Land of Israel. A border policeman, whose name, ironically, was Arafat, started cursing them and pushing. The boys weren't looking for a fight. They were speaking nicely with one of the Yassam officers, when this man allegedly said, "I'm sick of being nice" and started to choke Moshe, while covering his mouth. Four Yassam officers reportedly joined in, and threw him onto a bus. When Moshe protested further brutal action toward someone else, the officer punched him in the face, used pressure points in his ear to cause pain, cursed at him. Finally, other cops pulled his attacker off the bus. However, soon afterwards several Yassam officers got back on the bus, pushed the border policemen who was protecting him out of the way, and proceeded to pull his tzizit, choking him, and kicking him. All the while Moshe was yelling, "I surrender, I surrender! I didn't do anything!"

Despite how terrible these reports seemed, I was determined to try to see this event through the eyes of the soldiers and officers. I desperately wanted to understand. I therefore tried talking to many of the various security personnel on the scene. I wanted to know - did it torment them to have to prevent their fellow Jews from their struggle to preserve the Jewish quality of the Land of Israel? Most were pretty tight-lipped. One of the border policemen put it this way: "This is a restricted area, no civilians are allowed. There are hostile villages here."

"Yes," I told him, "I understand. But how do you feel about doing this?"

"I don't feel. I do my orders."

I tried several other officers. One told me that he can't speak to me while in uniform, that he has a job. I suggested that I speak to him later, when he is off-duty, and he said, "Later, I just want to go home."

I couldn't help but wonder: Does the army consist solely of battalions, or of individuals too? Where should the individual end and the establishment begin? Can they coexist? Must we lose our humanity to be part of the establishment?

The current "establishment" seems to have completely sold-out on the pioneers of Israel. What was Zionism, patriotism and nationalistic spirit, is now patently illegal. Criminal activity. Our soldiers - OUR SOLDIERS! - have been charged with stopping us in our tracks. Maybe even to threaten us and hurt us. Sometimes they do. But not always.

© Laura Ben David. 2007
By Laura Ben David, Neve Daniel
E-mail: bendavid.laura@gmail.com

Sneaky

New plan for Temple Mount bridge aims to silence critics

Jerusalem's Planning and Construction Committee will begin discussing an alternative to the controversial Mughrabi Bridge project Wednesday.

The original plan for the bridge, which leads from the Old City's Dung Gate and the Western Wall to the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate, raised hackles in the Arab world when it was presented in February, due to allegations that it would damage the Temple Mount.

The new plan, which is to be presented by a team of experts, is very different from the previous one. It shortens the bridge, which will now follow the route of the existing ramp to the Mughrabi, instead of beginning in the area of the Southern Wall Archaeological Park, where some experts feared that it would block the view of the Temple Mount.

The bridge will consist of a wooden walkway bordered by metal, with two-meter-high iron railings, as required by the police. The number of pylons supporting it will be reduced from seven to four.

The height of the pylons will not exceed half a meter, and they will be placed on platforms in spaces excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority during its salvage dig, allowing the antiquities to be restored and protected.

The planners mapped the archaeological finds along the bridge's path and found spaces in which the pylons could be placed without damaging the antiquities.

The bridge will not only be used by visitors coming to the Temple Mount, but also by the police, to send in large forces in case of unrest on the mount, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located.

The municipality and the Interior Ministry are now preparing to deal with the project's major opponents: Israeli Arabs, East Jerusalem residents and the Arab world.

L'Affair Wonkette Round-up

My first post

First links appear (thanks to CarlS)

I am threatened

Wonkette's Ken folds up

More links

http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-links.html

Brit Hume

Major flaming at Mobius

Who Said Kibbutznikim Are Socialists?

They're making money off of "humanitarian" efforts:-

The IDF closed Sufa Crossing on Tuesday after a Channel 10 crew managed to bypass Israeli security, cross into the Gaza Strip and interview several Palestinians.

Angry truck drivers began to throw rocks at the television crew and soldiers had to break up the ensuing brawl. The crew was then taken for police questioning for their unauthorized entry into the Strip.

The closure of the crossing sparked angry reactions towards Channel 10, which responded that their crew had exposed a severe security flaw which allowed goods to cross into Gaza without being screened.

Channel 10 claimed that the crossing operated under the control of Kibbutz Sufa, which benefited financially because of the terminal's use. The crew also discovered that each truck driver paid NIS 400 to Kibbutz Sufa in order to cross.

Source.

Thank You One and All

Typeractive

Urban Word of the Day


July 25, 2007: typeractive

Someone who is overly talkative on emails or text messages.

Man, this Emily should get a job. She's been messaging me every 2 minutes. And there are 10 emails in my inbox from her. She is way typeractive today.