Coming Into The New Year

Let's see, what's going on in the world?

Gilad Shalit may finally come home. Wouldn't it be great if he could celebrate the Yamim Noraim with his family?

Moody's say Israel has weathered the Financial Meltdown [we'll see if the banks and the government manage to mess it up before this is done...].

Hamas is upping their rocket and missile launches into southern Israel, while executing the Palestinians they don't like at home. Hmmmm...this is hardly even "news" anymore, although the YouTube executions are sort of a coup.....

School is starting on Tuesday, and certain schools in Petach Tikvah are playing like being Jewish is a color....hello, nobody is buying your excuses. BUT the Evil Zionist Settlers have stepped into the breach and proved themselves more menschlich than their counterparts in Petach Tikvah. In the meantime, I'm waiting to see Petach Tikvah's adherents of Jewish apartheid lose their school funding--preferably by Tuesday.

These are the same Evil Settlers who practice this kind of "apartheid." Won't see this in the Aftonbladet.....or Chron or NYT or LA Times, betcha!

Egypt weighed in with "no more Jewish building in East Jerusalem" as a condition for negotiations. [This is going to put a lot of Palestinian wage-earners out of business....maybe they can get employment with the road crews? ]

It's also pretty pointless. The Israeli government cannot stop (nor should it) private building on private land which has already been approved by the Jerusalem municipality. Owners of land, both Arab and Jewish, in East Jerusalem can sell their land to anyone they want--including developers, whether Zionist or Palestinian. Where that land has already been sold and is under development, a foreign government has no business issuing orders to stop "Jewish building." I seem to recall the same kind of laws existed in both South Africa and the pre-Civil-Rights-Act United States. In the latter it was called "segregation" and prohibited non-whites (including Jews) from buying or building in "white" areas; in South Africa, it was called "apartheid." Hosni Mubarak is conditioning peace on an apartheid policy--no Jews in would-be Arab neighborhoods (never mind that before 1948 they were our neighborhoods, too).

Lador is calling for minimum sentences for violent crimes. An excellent idea since we don't get to elect our judiciary, and its continued, misplaced leniency towards violent crime and horrendous traffic offenders is something the public is correctly outraged about. Electing our own trial judges so they are responsible to the public for their decisions would be another good move.

The kangaroo court show trials of Iranian dissidents protesting a stolen election continue, sadly without much vocal support or even notice in the obtuse western elite establishments. Is anyone going to speak up for them outside of Iran? J'accuse, world. {C'mon, Mr. President! You're the leader of the Free World. Stand up and speak out for people who only wanted their votes to count for something!}

And while they are standing trial, the Chinless One visits visits his fellow wanna-be nuclear terrorist to proclaim that "western interference" is the only reason for these protests, and that Iran and Syria must continue their policies together in the region.

And what policies would those be? The establishment of Greater Syria and a Shi'ite Caliphate at the tip of a nuclear weapon? Oh, yeah, and don't forget "Itbach al Yahood!" also, presumably, with your nuclear toys. Hey, Mr. President Obama, you just got slapped in the face in case you didn't notice. So much for holding out the hand of friendship--and meeting the clenched fist. Other countries celebrate the arrival of heads of state with a 21-gun salute. Not coincidentally, this visit corresponded with the biggest bomb and mortar attacks in Baghdad in years, with over 500 wounded and over 100 killed.....I don't believe in coincidence, particularly
al-Qaeda-looking "coincidence."

In the meantime, the Left is lamenting Obama's negative ratings in Israel while excoriating anyone who dares to suggest that the socialist utopia of Sweden may actually harbor antisemitism! Such a surprise! Imagine that, antiSemitism in Europe! Can't be! It's really a Right Wing Plot fomented by Lieberman to distract attention from the Occupation!


Occam's razor, idiots. No conspiracy theory is needed to explain European extreme dislike of Semitic peoples in their midst--it's a matter of historical record. Sweden simply let its benign mask slip. Aftonbladet published a grossly antisemitic article and if the Israeli government can condemn an offensive religious skit, and the Swedish government can block the Mohamed cartoons from the internet, then certainly the Swedes (as represented by their elected representatives) can have the good grace to say that, yes, a blood libel designed to incite hatred against Jews is offensive and we, the nation of Sweden find it reprehensible. Or at least in bad taste. Instead of "We can publish whatever we want [no, you can't--your Constitution prohibits libel, insult and incitement against groups of people] and you thin-skinned Jews will just have to live with it, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!"

So the Swedish reaction (go read the talkbacks here and abroad) has been along the lines of we-are-the-most-moral-country-on-earth, the embodiment of socialist western humanism, and how DARE you criticize us? And the Israeli and western leftist establishment is rallying to this disgusting perversion of human rights.....a la Stalinism. Good communists justified the Hitler-Stalin pact carving up Poland because Stalin was sacrosanct, the god of communism, and to disagree was heresy.

The same dynamic is at work here: Sweden is the Leftist mythological embodiment of The Good in socialist post-modern society, the role model of multiculturalism, social welfare, and free sex -- so Sweden, the self-appointed moral arbiter of all other nations, is equally sacrosanct and the dirty little secret that Swedes are every bit as antiSemitic as other Europeans has to be buried under heaps of abuse on anyone who dares to utter the heresy that Swedish bigotry is embodied not just in this newspaper article, but in the wide-ranging justifications that Swedes offer to defend it.

By the way, the most interesting posts I've read came from Swedes who hastened to assure me that, no, Sweden isn't antiSemitic at all! Of course if your name is Posner or Cohen, you would never be denied a job or a promotion, unlike if you had a name like...."Mohammed."

They said this. Really. I see...so the bastion of post-modern socialist multiculturalism isn't antiSemitic, it's only Islamophobic. Gee, nice to know that they're prepared to be so selective in their forms of discrimination.....somehow I don't find these admissions reassuring on the issue of racism generally in the Great White Hope of the North, nor does it fill me with confidence that antiSemitism isn't lurking in the dark corners.

But what? Me, worry? Naw, I don't live in Europe, can't do a thing about Iran's nukes, and this week I have more immediate worries.....the Husband went in for a skin biopsy following the sudden appearance of a very strange growth on the back.....the most worrisome part was not one doctor said, "Aw, it's nothing but get it checked anyway." He was shunted from doctor to dermatologist to surgeon in a matter of days (pretty fast for socialized medicine), and we're supposed to get the results in 3-4 weeks. WEEKS?!! I wanted to scream, but no, I was cool because the surgeon was a jerk. Hopefully, his knowledge will equal his arrogance. As a cancer survivor himself, the Husband is a bit concerned about this....my job is to keep him optimistic, and recite Tehillim.

So I am tabling the lesser concerns of war, peace, and world hunger and literacy for now....and just getting through the next month.

“On Rosh Hashanah it is written
On Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be
Who shall live and who shall die"

Evil is averted by prayer, repentence and tzedakah. The repentence and tzedakah is our endeavor. But while we are Jewish, we are nondenominational in prayer--we'll take everyone's, thank you.