Graffiti On History's Walls

Life takes some unusual turns and I regret being only occasionally free to visit The Revival, however this article by Mortimer Zuckerman says pretty much everything I wanted to say when we were discussing this subject in January.

Quote:
It is difficult for westerners, unmarked by the searing memories of Jewish history, to realize the extent to which the survival of Israel remains an issue for Jews, who cannot dismiss the overheated Arab rhetoric that seeks to justify terrorism against innocent civilians by describing Israel's existence as illegitimate. That rhetoric is the product of a careful calculation by Arab political leaders who recognized the popular appeal of scapegoating Israel for their failure to provide for their own people while legitimizing their regimes.

Not all Arab politicians, happily, indulge in such cynical calculations. Back in February, I participated in a remarkable meeting convened by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. The group, which met in the city of Almaty, included the presidents from the central Asian republics of Kirgizstan and Tajikistan, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, and the deputy foreign minister of Turkey. The meeting was titled the Conference on Order and Tolerance. As we exchanged views, I found myself listening raptly to statesmen who spoke with feeling of their support for a dialogue between Muslims and Jews in an atmosphere of religious tolerance and understanding while denouncing in explicit terms extremism and terrorism. If one takes the number of Muslims among the countries represented in Almaty and adds the number of Muslims in moderate countries like India, the result is a huge swath of the Muslim world that rejects the extremism of the Arab leadership among Israel's neighbors.

Such tolerance, sadly, is not to be found in the world body created to foster universal values and human ideals — the United Nations. Tragically, the growth of international hostility to Israel has found its most prominent expression in the operations of the U.N. It has, in fact, come a long way from the legitimization and legalization of the existence of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to have their own state on their own land through its 1947 resolution proposing and approving a two-state solution.

Since then, the U.N. has adopted an almost reflexively anti-Israeli stance canted to the anti-Israeli majority of its membership. The U.N. today is a regular forum for vicious anti-Israel attacks, conferring on the spurious and the hateful the false cloak of reason and legitimacy, and thus has become an organization for the conservation, not the reduction, of the Middle East conflict.

Some U.N. actions simply defy belief. At the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, Israel — the only democracy in the Middle East committed to civil rights, the rule of law, and Arab participation in democratic government — was attacked by Arab and Third World nations and accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Then there is the Fourth Geneva Convention, drafted originally in response to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, to protect people like diplomats and visitors subjected to a military occupation.

Last year, U.N. conferees met and, for the first time in the 52 years since its adoption, excoriated one country — Israel — for alleged violations. Not Cambodia and Rwanda, with their well-documented records of genocide. Not Zimbabwe, with its racist economic policies. Not the Balkan states, with their ethnic cleansing. Not even China, with its dismal record on Tibet. Only Israel was singled out. Similarly, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, chaired on occasions by such notably enlightened states as Libya, has followed this same pattern, devoting much of its time, energy, and efforts to attacking Israel. The commission went so far as to affirm, last April 15, the legitimacy of suicide bombing against Israelis, or in judgment-free U.N.-speak, "all available means, including armed struggle."

IN THE ARAB WORLD, Zionism is portrayed not as the Jewish response to a history of anti-Semitism in a world that culminated in the Holocaust but as a hyperaggressive variant of colonialism. But since this new anti-Semitism manifests itself so clearly now as political rejection of the Jewish state, it is worth examining the historical record for a moment. Fact: The majority of Jews came to Israel in the late 19th century and early 20th century not as conquering Europeans backed by a national army and treasury but as the wretched of the earth in search of respite from ceaseless persecution. They were not wealthy; they were young, poor, and desperate. The notion that the traditional position of the Arabs in Palestine was jeopardized by Jewish settlements is belied by another fact: that when the Jews arrived, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and wildly neglected land of sandy deserts and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, described it as a "desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds — a silent, mournful expanse. . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

Even people unsympathetic to the Zionist cause believed that Jewish immigrants had improved the condition of Palestinian Arabs. Consider the words of Sharif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic holy places in Arabia, in 1918: "One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1,000 years. At the same time, we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine. . . . They knew that the country was for its original sons. The return of these exiles to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren." Hussein understood then, as so many refuse to see now, that the regeneration of Palestine and the growth of its population came only after the Jews returned in significant numbers. As Winston Churchill, then the British colonial secretary, pointed out: "The land was not being taken away from the Arabs. The Arabs sold land to Jews only if they chose to do so."

The hope was that the Arabs would accept Israelis as their neighbors and, finally, recognize them as such. That hope died aborning. Even war, that grim final arbiter of international relations, has made no difference. The Arabs resisted from the outset a Jewish presence in the region. They expanded their war against Israel into an attack on the very idea of Israel. Zionism, the Jewish claim to a land of their own, was declared racist because the Arabs said it deprived them of their land. They substituted the homeless Palestinian for the homeless Jew. The Arabs, having rendered the Palestinians homeless by refusing to accept partition in 1948 and having kept many of the Palestinians who fled the battle homeless in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan by refusing to resettle them in their lands, now blame this homelessness on the Jews. They have consistently charged that it was the Jews who had driven the Arabs out of Palestine. But as the eminent Arabist Bernard Lewis has written, "the great majority, like countless millions of refugees elsewhere, left their homes amid the confusion of and panic of invasion and war — one more unhappy part of the vast movement of population which occurred in the aftermath of World War II."

Even the foreign press, in regular contact with all sides during the conflict of 1948, wrote nothing to suggest that the flight of the Palestinians was not voluntary. Nor did Arab spokesmen, such as the Palestinian representative to the U.N., Jamal Husseini, or the secretary general of the Arab League, blame the Jews contemporaneously with the 1948 war for the flight of Arabs and Palestinians. In fact, those who fled were urged to do so by other Arabs. As then Prime Minister of Iraq Nuri Said put it, "the Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." One Arab who fled encapsulated this thinking in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments told us, `Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in." And a bad situation, impossibly, was allowed to get worse. Arabs and Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war were resettled in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the only such agency established for any refugee group since the massive dislocations of World War II. The partition of India occurred at the same time as the conflict in Palestine, and millions of Hindus and Muslims were uprooted, but virtually nothing was done for them. Nothing was done in response to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, where a long-standing religious, social, and political culture was virtually destroyed.

Yet 55 years after they were first established, the Arab refugee camps still exist. With the exception of Jordan, the Arab governments home to these camps have refused to grant citizenship to the refugees and opposed their resettlement. In Lebanon, 400,000 stateless Palestinians are not allowed to attend public school, own property, or even improve their housing stock. Three generations later, they continue to serve as political pawns of the Arab states, still hopeful of reversing the events of 1948. "The return of the refugees," as President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt said years later, "will mean the end of Israel."

The U.N., through its administration of the camps, has made a complicated problem infinitely more so. How? U.N. officials define refugees in the Middle East to include the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. In other parts of the world, descendants of refugees are not defined as refugees. The result of this unique treatment has been to increase the numbers of Arab refugees from roughly 700,000 to over 4 million, by including children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren. As a former prime minister of Syria, Khaled al Azm, wrote in his memoirs, "It is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon them. [We] exploited them in executing crimes of murder and throwing bombs. All this in the service of political purposes." And so it goes, to this very day. At the time of the founding of the State of Israel, 900,000 Jewish refugees were forced out of neighboring Arab states in a coordinated effort. These refugees were absorbed into the new Israel. Yet the world was, and still is, untroubled by the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

TO SINGLE OUT ISRAEL as the only state that must restore a refugee population is to hold the Jewish state to a different standard. Or, perhaps, the more accurate term is double standard. Against such a backdrop, with a history so cynically manipulated by its enemies, the distortions and outright untruths that characterize more recent relations between Israel and the Palestinians should probably come as no surprise. There are virtually countless examples from which to choose, but last year's "massacre" by Israeli forces at the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin is particularly illustrative.

A Palestinian suicide bomber, on Passover eve, killed 29 people and injured 140 in the Israeli city of Netanya. It was the sixth terrorist bombing that week. The Israelis responded by sending troops into the West Bank, including the refugee camp at Jenin, the principal home of the bomb makers. A 10-day battle ensued. The Palestinians, with support from U.N. representatives, alleged that the Israelis had massacred hundreds of innocents, carried out summary executions, refrigerated the corpses, and removed them. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian spokesman, reiterated the claim of many hundreds killed. The media accepted his version. But subsequent news reports, and even Palestinian testimony and writings recently collated, established the fact that groups like Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad used women and children as shields during the fighting. The reports showed, conclusively, that there was no massacre of Palestinian civilians and documented that the Israelis exercised great restraint during the battle to minimize civilian casualties while suffering an inordinately high number of their own as a result.

Distortions and untruths, unsurprisingly, characterize the Palestinians' political dealings with Israel, as well. A critical moment in the relationship was the Oslo agreement of 1993. There, the negotiating principle was land for peace. What Israel received was no peace in return for its offer of land. The most generous Israeli offer of land for peace came at Camp David three years ago. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, including the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The Camp David offer was not only rejected by Arafat but used as a provocation to launch a campaign of violence and terrorism that continues to this day.

The notion of land for peace bears exploring. If it is taken to mean that Israel must turn over more land until peace is achieved and Arab belligerence ended, the incurious may be left with the conclusion that the lack of peace must be the result of Israel's failure to yield sufficient land. Nothing could be further from the truth. There have been thousands of terrorist attacks since the second intifada began, three years ago. The only way Israel has been able to reduce the number of suicide bombers is eliminating their sanctuary by controlling the West Bank through occupation and sealing off Gaza.

But the story is not one of occupation of the West Bank by Israel. If the term "occupation" had any relevance at all, it was lost three years ago with Arafat's rejection of Barak's proposal for a Palestinian state. The issue is Palestinian refusal to grant Israel the right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel's battle is not the battle of Jew against Muslim. It is a battle against the hatred of the Jews and their connection to the land of Israel. How else to comprehend the Palestinian rejection of Jerusalem as the sacred city of the Jews and the Western Wall as the Second Temple, except as a rejection of the Jewish presence there? "There was no temple in Jerusalem," Arafat said at Camp David. "It was only an obelisk." To question the core of the Jewish faith is hardly an indication of readiness to resolve the conflict.

Quite the contrary, the spiraling Palestinian violence evidences a single-minded determination to continue the conflict. The insight of Amos Oz, the liberal Israeli writer, is pertinent. He is haunted, he said, by the observation that before the Holocaust, European graffiti read, "Jews to Palestine," while today it has been changed, to "Jews out of Palestine." The message to Jews, Oz says, is simple: "Don't be here, and don't be there. That is, don't be."

From the article Graffiti on History's Walls by Mortimer B. Zuckerman

Comments

Kazakhastan, kirgistan and tajkistan... not sure, but I was of the opinion that the central asian "stans" were not considered bastions of freedom and liberty by anyone - maybe I was wrong.

A part of that article reminds me of what I read a few days ago:

If you can't convince 'em, accuse 'em. That's the advice from The Israel Project (TIP) for pro-Israel activist. … Rather than try to defend Israeli settlements, change the subject. If that doesn't work, try accusing those who advocate removing Jewish settlements of promoting "a kind of ethnic cleansing to move all Jews" from the West Bank. TIP calls that "the best settlement argument" in its 2009 Global Language Dictionary.

(from "")

A lot of that article is making excuses and defending the indefensible and mischaracterising of fact. That "voluntary flight from the conflict" is something most people would do and consider it a smart thing - like what is happening in Swat in Pakistan right now. They also expect to return when the fighting dies down. Ofcourse the decimation and wiping off the map of villages that put up some resistance may have also played a part...

and for those that stayed, they are still being restricted - even in northern Israel, places around Jaffa etc, villages were built to cuirtail the natural growth of the palestinian communities - and the haredim are still being asked to move there even now to continue such activities as many fear the large Arab demographics of northern Israel.

While singling out Israel in many of the things may be wrong, that also does not mean the accusations are false or inaccurate.

A critical moment in the relationship was the Oslo agreement of 1993. There, the negotiating principle was land for peace. What Israel received was no peace in return for its offer of land.

And what the Palestinians saw was a more than a tripling of Israeli settlements - settlements that they had implicitly agreed not to build as part of that same agreement where both sides promised to not change the facts on the ground. Yet, over the next almost decade of peace, Israel did not stick by its agreement and the lives of ordinary Palestinians became worse.

The fundamental problem is not one of Jews being allowed to live in the lands of Israel, but of preventing others from doing so.

Anyway, welcome back and thanks for presenting that article - I do disagree with large swaths of it though.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Just gotta add that the vast majorty of current Israelis will not have suffered under the nazi regime, and even if they had it gives them no right to continue the cycle of abuse.

The people have an ability to be brave, to break the cycle. Will they? I doubt it.

(and yes, I am of the opinion that the Israeli government has so far wanted a solution, because that would mean them giving something up. They are using the politics of the past, the politics of fear and hate and that has to be stopped, either by the politicians, or the people under them. Unfortunately that is not the case.)

A good first step would be to allow cement into Gaza. Follow that up by allowing other goods in, letting people live almost liveable lives. There is nothing that will drive a person further away from violence than giving them something to live for.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Thanks Admin.

I didn't post the whole thing, but the article is about antisemitism and its relationship with anti-zionism. While it undoubtedly comes from a singularly pro-Israel viewpoint and therefore does gloss over or ignore those criticisms, it makes two key points in my view. The first is that Israel's establishment cannot be simplified and vilified as though it were a colonial takeover, and this is a significant opposition to that widespread deception. The second is that a disproportionate bias against Israel is very evident, and serves to conceal or detract from equally serious or far worse criticisms that could be leveled against other states including Israel's hypocrite detractors. A third point - my point - is that plenty of antisemites in the west are in on it, the man on the street is influenced, and few Muslims question this view since it does fit with the body of information they receive. Muslims know how racist propagandists work to infiltrate the agenda, and should understand this attempt to highlight the impact.

  • It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. -- Wallace Stevens

By the way I spent some months in Jaffa last year, and while there are certainly tensions, it is not at all true that Muslims are restricted. I want to scream when I read it. In fact the municipality often gives such deference to Muslims in Jaffa that many non-Muslims (and the Jaffa community includes Christians and refugees from all over the place) feel they are sidelined. There are also ghetto problems there across both Jews and Arabs, and cultural issues such as Arab boys setting fire to cats, harassing women and throwing stones at dogs (and their walkers), and I witnessed these things on my doorstep. Every night I was woken by gangs playing Arabic music loud around and around the block. Israelis are fearful to involve the police, because even the police are timid with these gangs. And my friends who went to school with Arabs and thought little of politics, say that it is mainly in the last few years that the Arab populace has become actively radicalised by outsiders, generally families of Gazans who had cooperated with Israel and were resettled. That last point I couldn't swear by. I met many Arabs who were not backwards or seething, who were friendly, so I do not mean to vilify the Arab populace either, merely to give a little insight on those points. I have an activist friend there who could say more on the proper bones of contention, such as the building of homes on either side of Arab communities that some Jewish Israelis do hope will drive Arabs out, so I do not suggest there are not very legitimate grievances, but they go both ways, both Jewish and Arab populations there have a history, and immigrants are of all colours and creeds.

  • It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. -- Wallace Stevens

You wrote:
Just gotta add that the vast majorty of current Israelis will not have suffered under the nazi regime, and even if they had it gives them no right to continue the cycle of abuse.

That is exactly the conceit the article intends to challenge, if you want to read the first half. The Germans did not conduct a holocaust by way of purchasing Jewish land, moving in and waiting for an armed challenge.
  • It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. -- Wallace Stevens

I do expect there to be many legitimate grievances of the Israelis too - but that does not mean I do not see them as crying wolf all too often in order to not reach a settlement/peace. Israel as a government has never wanted it and has always used the situation at hand to play the victim. When violence, complain about the violence hindering it, when no violence, break the agreements, expand settlements at ever expanding paces and yet complain how the Palestinians are seeing those very settlements as a problem.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Just need to add that a central assertion in that article that before the arrival of the Jews is not only wrong and a soundly defeated argument by others, it is also potentially that can be expanded into what nazis themselves used to show themselves as superior to all other races.

From the first link:

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (, p. 140 & , p. 7-10)

PS - I cannot vouch for that site, but I had read this argument before, so I just googled and this was the first link. It does disprove the assertion, but beyond that, I do not know anything about the site.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Palestine, as a stretch of land, and the group of people from there, have been displaced, and the area formerly recognised as Palestine, disbanded. This has been done by zionists, who claim to represent Judaism - albeit the majority appear to be 'Jewish'.

Are you, or the author of your quote, suggesting that just because Jews have been treated unfairly, they belong to a land - that being thousands of years after having 'owned' it - can displace those, who themselves, have centures of civilization, in the vey same area ?.

I have a few questions.

Is there an authentic piece of work, documentation, apart from the fairytale of the 'Torah' - here, i am deliberately being hypothetical - linking the Jews, and from this, i mean every single person, who has taken homage, to the land ?

is the 'Dome of the Rock', not over a thousand years old, and proof of deep rooted Islamic civilization ?. is it too inconceivable of an 'israeili' to imagine, that their forefathers of 4000 years ago, may actually have changed religous afiliation in that time-span ?.

is Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus Christ, not of significance to Christianity, and therefore belongs to Christians ?
seeing as Zionists believe so firmly Jerusalem, and the rest of the land around it is theirs (former Palestine), are zionists only interested in 'their' land, or everyone who's been displaced ?.

at the moment, i'll leave these questions with you, as there are many more to come, dependant upon your reply - whether it be you, or your quoted author who does so.

BD Brother wrote:
Is there an authentic piece of work, documentation, apart from the fairytale of the 'Torah' - here, i am deliberately being rhetorical, albeit even factually correct - linking the Jews, and from this, i mean every single person, who has taken homage to the land ?

The qur'an mentioned the promise I think.

And can you not be disrespectful of the torah - while we believe that it has been altered, we also believe that it was a divinely revealed book.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

You wrote:
BD Brother wrote:
Is there an authentic piece of work, documentation, apart from the fairytale of the 'Torah' - here, i am deliberately being *hypothetical* - linking the Jews, and from this, i mean every single person who has taken homage, to the land ?

The qur'an mentioned the promise I think.

And can you not be disrespectful of the torah - while we believe that it has been altered, we also believe that it was a divinely revealed book.

no doubt, but in the same way Jews do not acknowledge Christianity or Islam as divine religions (Christianity being succeeded by Islam), and subsequently the divine revelations, i'm being hypotheical.

I believe the Qur'an relates to the current occupation - though i could be totally wrong. Maybe Ya'qub could so kindly enlighten us.

ps; you:please edit my now edited quote

It does not matter if they do not accept the qur'an, we do. Editing the post as you suggest will actually make it *more* confusing, so I would rather not - people can read around it to see what you meant anyway.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Just to add the argument should NOT be that Jews (or anyone else actually) should not be allowed to settle in the Israeli/Palestinian lands (or anywhere else in the world), but that they/we should not do this by forcing others out of those same places.

and other place have reported in the last few days that 33% of the settlements are on privately owned palestinian land - ie stolen land, ie theft pure and simple:

To the attention of Benny Begin: Figures provided by Peace Now show that 80 of the 100 outposts in the West Bank were built wholly or partly on private Palestinian land. Sixteen outposts are located entirely on private land, and more than half of the other outposts are on private land. Seven thousand of the 16,000 dunams occupied by the 100 outposts are privately owned.

You cannot argue with facts. Nor can you argue with basic moral imperatives. Settlements that were lawfully built on public land are subject to ideological, political and security debate. Outposts that were illegally built on private land are robbery. The thousands of Israelis living unlawfully in the territories on lands that do not belong to them are lawbreakers. Israel must address their extensive, methodical law-breaking.

And that is not a palestinian or a pro Palestinian source stating the above.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Why me? What do I now about this?

Don't just do something! Stand there.

you now nothing. But do you might know something.

Does that even make sense?

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

You wrote:
you now nothing. But do you might know something.

Does that even make sense?

About as much sense as a chocolate teapot.

Don't just do something! Stand there.

Just came across an article on BBC News about Israeli Arabs:

Israeli Arabs struggle for land

After Israel's housing minister called on Jews to move to the north of the country to stop what he described as "the spread of Arabs" there, the BBC's Katya Adler reports on the struggle for land in the area.

Sami Salameh has taken me to what used to be his home before the Israeli authorities flattened it.

Metal rods and slices of skirting board are all that's left, among an expanse of sun-scorched wild grass.

He has brought along some photographs and kicks the earth as he shows them to me. The wiry 65-year-old man is angry and emotional.

"When the house collapsed so did my dreams," he says.

He insists this plot of earth belonged to his family dating back to Ottoman times. But Israel has claimed it as state land. He is not allowed to build here now.

Mr Salameh's new home is in the Arab town of Majdal Krum, in northern Israel. It's illegally built, as is the whole neighbourhood.

His family of 14 lives in three rooms. The sewage system is poor.

Mr Salameh's wife, Ashi, tells me the atmosphere in the house is listless and depressed.

He blames their birthright - living as Arabs in the Jewish state of Israel, he says.

"I lost everything when they demolished my house. If I had equal rights, I wouldn't be in this mess. Jewish communities get building permits easily. They have electricity, water, sewage, street lights and parks. How come they live like that and we don't?"

Just outside Mr Salameh's home, a group of boys plays football in the street. Their identity, like his, is complex.

They are Israeli but also Arab. Their families stayed put in Israel after its war of independence 60 years ago.

Israel's Basic Law says all its citizens are equal, but Israeli Arabs say some Israelis are more equal than others...

Read more @

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

"Joie de Vivre" nice name! Smile (i just came across its meaning)

"How many people find fault in what they're reading and the fault is in their own understanding" Al Mutanabbi