Entering Week Eight

8.20.06

Entering Week Eight

I have rebelliously (against myself) activated a different blog format. I hopes you likes it.

Just returned to the kibbutz after spending Shabbat with my (new) cousin Debbie & fam. She and her husband Baruch were kind enough to host / feed / hang out with me despite having to mind their five kids (ages 4-16), all of whom were home all the time thanks to summer break. Here we are, 7 of us… the oldest son was MIA for the photos, unfortunately.

From L to R, spelling errors aside: Me, Iban, Shevi, Debbie, Noa, Baruch, Sivan. It was a blessing to be able to spend time with a real family again, especially one as beautiful & enjoyable as this.

Debbie, incidentally, forwarded me what may be my favorite editorial on the “34-Day War,” written by a Christian Lebanese academic… check out http://www.menapress.com/article.php?sid=1479 if you’re interested. My favorite parts are where he outlines the damage wrought on his country and, specifically, on Beirut, in precise terms that I have not seen in other (admittedly, few) articles I've read. That said, I think he's a bit selective in choosing what he describes. Decide for yourself.

The good news is that there’s not much else to report, except that my Hebrew teacher is covering past and future tenses simultaneously, which is like trying to teach your toddler to pirouette the day after she takes her first steps. I hope she doesn’t expect us to actually speak in those tenses, at least for now… or maybe I just belong in Special Ed for Amerrrican Monoglots.

We’re all enjoying the calm that began last Tuesday, hoping hard -- against the grain of the news -- that it lasts as long.

Incidentally, for all you tennis fans, David Foster Wallace wrote a beautiful (yes, beautiful) 5-pager on R. Federer, just published in the NYTimes Magazine… http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?ref=playmagazine

Peace.

"Ceasefire"

“Ceasefire”

16-17 August, 2006

“…Yoni Kassous, 30, who works for a technology company near Tel Aviv, was troubled by the war and its management. ‘We say that we won,’ he said. ‘But I think: ‘What did we win? What did we accomplish?’ ’ Like many of the reserves, he expects to return to Lebanon at some point to again try to face down Hezbollah.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-mideast.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=9a51ca9178438705&hp&ex=1155787200&partner=homepage

“‘We tell [the Israelis] that after tasting humiliation in the latest battles, your weapons are not going to protect you -- not your planes, or missiles, or even your nuclear bombs. . . . The future generations in the Arab world will find a way to defeat Israel," [Syrian President] Assad added.” http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=12343

A ceasefire: the missiles have stopped, reservists are no longer being called into service, and some soldiers are even moving home. Since 8AM Tuesday morning I think that most people here have relaxed at least a little, especially after burying a kibbutznik who died in Lebanon last week. In class we watched some army general ordering the troops to lay down their weapons, marking a break from Immediate Threat. Will the quiet last?

Probably not. As you read above, in addition refusing to disarm, Hizbullah & its supporters have not skipped a beat in reaffirming their vision of running the Jews into the sea. Israel will fight Hizbullah again – whether it is this year or next decade, it is hard to know – and the next conflict will inflict greater costs to all involved. I fear that for every civilian that Kofi Annan thinks he has saved today, several (or more) will die in her stead when Israel is forced to fight the second half of this war.

6000 Hizbullah fighters held out against Israel’s might in the air, land & sea – longer than any army has sustained direct combat with the Israelis since 1948 – and it’s no surprise to me that Hizbullah has declared victory despite having dragged millions of their Lebanese hosts into ruin. In the next go-round, Israel can expect a more confident, determined & prepared enemy, not to mention a more numerous one.

What has Israel gained from this? In my view, not much. On the surface, of course, dozens of Israeli soldiers & civilians who might have perished will survive, and the whole country will get to to “relax” after sustaining high alert. But what does this mean for the future? Hizbullah’s refusal to disarm in Southern Lebanon, along with Iran’s & Syria’s increasingly robust public (and ostensibly private) support for the group can only mean one thing…

Israelis meanwhile have entered a fierce debate over the Government’s / IDF’s performance in the last month. Many are critical. One of my co-workers in Plasson (the kibbutz’s plastics factory), a former army commando we’ve dubbed “The Nice Guy” (no one can remember his name… he really is a Nice Guy), is livid. The Nice Guy thinks that what should have been a full-blown war effort was half-assed until the final days, that Hizbullah was given too much time to adapt to Israeli air strikes, etc. Most of all, he is livid over the government’s willingness to pull out in the thick of the war, I think for some of the reasons I’ve already mentioned. “You can’t dance half a dance, and you can’t fight half a war.” Based on what I know, and despite the unsavory implications, I think I agree with him.

In other news, two of my ulpanist co-workers and I got in trouble at work for building a fort out of plastic bins… on the factory floor. Yes, our job really is that boring: if you don’t believe me, you try walking up & down a giant aisle watching tiny plastic products drop into crates for 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, and then tell me that building a fort is a Bad Idea.

OK, it was a Bad Idea. Yesterday we played Plastic Bowling, and the day before that we tried to make clothes out of the various plastics we had at our disposal. We have been making a bit of a mess (though to our credit we clean up before leaving). I’m just amazed we weren’t caught sooner. We may have to lay low for a while, but I’m hoping we'll find a way to continue rocking it on the factory floor before too long.

It’s 11PM, which means I should start studying for tomorrow’s test… and maybe stop by the pub.

MM: Week 1

** For the good of the order: Now that I'm at the kibbutz, life is (predictably) slowing down, etc., I will plan to write about one blog entry per week.


Today was a sad day at Ma'agan Michael, as one of our young men was gunned dead yesterday while serving in Lebanon. The kibbutz has ~900 permanent residents, so the community is small enough so that this has affected nearly everyone.

But the rest of my news is mostly good. I am more or less liking my new Hebrew teacher, who unfortunately has had to spend our first week expending her energies on a group of noisy Mexican ulpanists who compost around half my class. They just graduated high school together, have known each other for years, etc... but I think they have made some headway that bodes well for the next 20 wks or so.

The people here are nice, though on average they are younger than the folks from Haifa. Most are around 18 or 19, taking a year to do their own thing before university. There are Americans, but not an overwhelming number (as there were at Haifa), and most people speak decent to good English. The exceptions are the group of Russians, many of whom live next door to me, and two Hungarains, one of whom is my roommate. Here's a shot of me and Anita, my new Hungarian buddy, on MM's splendid beach. Sorry that we're stuck in the shadows...


















The beach here is worth at least another couple pics....



















Yes, those are islands in the background... and yes, I have swum to them.

















We have dogs here like Haifa/Jerusalm have cats. Except our dogs are happy [read: not starving].









I might look stoned, but I promise I was alert while exploring the kibbutz's full-fledged cactus garden. It was my first cactus garden.









Overlooking one of MM's famous fishponds, a cool Sea (to the right) Breeze flows over this spot. There are so many gorgeous perches here... and the other parts of the kibbutz -- i.e., where people actually live -- are beautiful, too. But that's enough pics for now.






Peace.

The Pics are Back

...and here to stay, for at least 5 more months. I have some catch-up posting to do, so that's what this entry will be...

*Note: I have posted a couple new entries recently, so just keep scrolling down after this one if you feel like something's missing.





The ruins of Caesaria, formerly Palestine's paramount seaport, prove a nice fishing spot for locals, and also a nice photo. The picture of Johan and me in the last entry was taken onthe big rock near the center.













King Herod's ampiheater, which now plays host to prestigious musical/cultural events. In addition to building Ceasaria (in honor of Emporer Ceasar Augustus), Herod built the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Following the temple's destruction around 70CE, all that remained is the Western (or Wailing) wall, planted right next to the spot that would become the Dome of the Rock.












Haifa from the sky, or really from the 30th floor viewing station of a skyscraper atop Mt. Carmel (Haifa's hill).










Here I am holding some guy's broom in Haifa's Arab shook (marketplace). A good place to stock up on tasty veggies, breads, etc for cheap.














Cats in Haifa/Jerusalem are like squirells in the US. They are Everywhere. This one's curled up on somone's blanket in the middle of our Hebrew Univ (Jerusalem) suite. Jerusalem's cats were noticeably healthier than Haifa's, which were skinny & kind of scuffed, if you can imagine that.













Here are Jeff & Dave, two of my fellow UHaifa ulpanists, preparing for the final exam.












And here are some more folks from the UHaifa Ulpan, headed by our wonderful instructor Devorah, 4th from left.

Pictures of the Kibbutz to arrive soon, I promise.

Ma'gan Michael, a new beginning

3 August, 2006
Kibbutz Ma'agen Michael (45km S of Haifa)

Hello All,

This entry marks my safe arrival & first morning/afternoon at Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, and I have to say that aside from living quarters the place is absolutely gorgeous. This place has flowers & palm trees Galore, not to mention a famously beautiful perch on the sea (which I have not yet checked out). What's more, they have some sweet high-speed wireless that is fast enough to satisfy my American-sized attention span.

There are tons of new folks I have to meet, which I'm going to work on now. To my surprise, these Ulpanists are younger and have (much) weaker Hebrew, overall, than than the ones I met at UHaifa. I'm sure there will be more surprises before long. Hopefully I will have had a chance to check out the Kibbutz's famous private beach before my next writing...

Until then, I am finally posting an entry on developments up North, which I hope you find interesting despite its being a bit out of date...

31 July, 2006

Jerusalem

So I have to give Bush some credit for his stance on the Israel-Hizbullah conflict. I doubt that planting democracy throughout Middle East is a very good goal (see today’s NYTimes lead article… I just closed the window but can’t get back onto their website, or any non-Israeli website. Ahh, another day writing without being able to post), but you can guess from my last entry that I think that Bush’s latest support for Israel is right on track.

You can check out one Israeli Prof’s take on Hizbullah at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3284057,00.html. Unfortunately I can’t get onto Al Jazeera, the BBC or any other site likely to offer alternate viewpoints right now. At least this Internet Café – the only one in hiking range – serves decent food.

In other news, a few of my Ulpanist friends and I got our asses handed to us on the soccer court a few hours ago. Just when we thought we were making some progress, a bunch of Israelis have to make an example of us. We were like the Might Ducks in the first half of those movies, in the parts before Emelio Estevez’s revelations launch him into super-coachdom. So it goes.

Two days to Kibbutz Life, and counting…

30 July, 2006

Jerusalem

56 Civilians Dead After IDF Strike, Mostly Women and Children

The thoughts of a mostly uninformed guy….

The question as to whether or not this was preventable seems beyond absurd – how could the army be so careless? Between last week’s strike on a UN observation post and today’s incomprehensible error, I am wondering with increasing anxiety what in the world is going on inside the IDF War Room. How can the IDF chalk up such low and embarrassing transgressions while battling a seemingly implacable enemy that is winning international sympathy despite their having spilt first blood?

I worry that, a little like the US in the year following 9/11, Israel is squandering some direly needed international understanding with carelessness and a lack of strategy.

The conflict with Hizbullah has broken the two week mark, easily, with no clear end in sight. As one Israeli reporter noted earlier this week, aside from hearing about scattered shoot-outs, bombings, etc., it would be nice to know more about the IDF’s actual progress. So far we know eerily little, excepting that Hizbullah has shown unanticipated resilience on its home turf. Unfortunately I cannot shed more light on the situation than your local reporter…

One thing that seems increasingly clear to me is that in addition to being a war among peoples, this is a war between cultures. I don’t know whether it is strategy or simply bad luck that each side’s stipulations for a ceasefire involve demands that the other side will never agree to meet. From what I can see (in the media), the militant Islamic culture seems to be winning a ton of international favor. After two short weeks, reporters have all but forgotten that Hizbullah’s killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers – the act that sparked this conflagration – is not an act of negation but terror, not the act of a sovereign state but of a group of bandits that cannot be held accountable for anything with any credibility. Is Western media is warming to the methods of militant extremism? Maybe. My sense from reading a few recent reports is that writers essentially have stopped caring about how the conflict began, focusing on today’s attacks while brushing away the context that precipitated them.

That context, those kidnapped IDF troops – and the thousand or so incarcerated supporters that Hizbullah is demanding from Israeli prisons – appears to lie at the crux of any solution here, barring a miraculous recovery of those two young men. If an extremist group tried to bargain with the US, can you possibly imagine our government (or a single politician) bowing? The truth is that Israel has negotiated under terms like these before (I don’t know much about these deals, except that some happened as recently as within the last few years), but this is clearly different. Israel and Hizbullah have dug into their mutually unpalatable positions, and despite Condoleezza’s smarts and good intentions I don’t see a quick way out of this barring some surprise military triumph in the North.

I have no idea how Israel should combat this stealthy and unremitting aggressor. I know even less about how Lebanon will rebuild after this (will Israel play a part, etc.). In my mind, it is a credit to the Israeli ethos that the lives of two of its soldiers have inspired the effort in the North. Granted that issues of security, etc. also play into the mix in major ways, but in the Israeli soul it is those two boys and the principle of their right to life that makes the going worth roughing. Israel has faced greater challenges before, and I remain confident that this country will learn from its mistakes and find an answer.

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A TEST: DO PICTURES WORK NOW?

... yahaa! They're back!

This is my friend Johan and me. Johan comes from Belgium... and is an Iron Man on the soccer turf.

Wireless Woes

So the internet cafe near my dorms continues to suck big time... there is material to post, but my laptop just can't connect (I am writing from a HebrewU machine).

Tomorrow we have Finals, marking the end of a long and interesting month in Haifa/Jerusalem, and not long after handing in my test I will be jumping on a train to Kibbutz Ma'agen Michael. Hopefully, the Kibbutz will be better suited to blogging...

Stay tuned for more entries soon!