Category Archives: Israel

Israel Maintains An Oil Pipeline With Iran, While Urging The US To Aggress Against The Islamic Republic

Uncategorized

My-my. Israel maintains an oil pipeline with Iran. It is alleged that “Iranian oil no longer flows through the pipeline.” What’s not in dispute is that Israel urges the US to aggress against Iran, while it keeps its options open.

Trade is excellent always. It forestalls war (something that makes neocons like Mad Max Boot a very sad boy). Israel should trade with regional powers. It should just refrain from hypocrisy—getting the US to fight battles Israel itself is trying to admirably avert via trade.

There is great secrecy, not least a gag order, involved in the dealings of the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC) a joint venture with Iran, set up in 1968.

Israel, worried about national security, maintains tight control over EAPC, to the extent that articles about its business dealings must pass through the military censor.

Instead of renewing EAPC’s concession, which came up this year, Israel formed a new company with the same initials, the Europe Asia Pipeline Co, owned by the government. It will take over the original EAPC’s responsibilities by September, with an option to extend the handover period an additional six months.

Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said in a statement on Sunday that it had extended the gag order on EAPC for five more years and broadened it to include the new company, known as EAPC-B, as well.

MORE.

UPDATED (11/13): Apparently It’s The Saudi-Israeli-American Axis Of Angels

Uncategorized

In Saudi Arabia, a new, more dangerous regime is consolidating regional power, plotting to destabilize Lebanon and blame Iran. Almost overnight has the kingdom shifted from rule by family/dynasty to a more authoritarian style of one-man rule.

Yemenis have dared defend themselves meekly against the Saudi-US coalition of obliteration. So Saudis are now threatening war with/on Iran. Meanwhile, Israel is urging its diplomats to push for international support for the Saudi assaults against Yemen’s Houthi. (Link died mysteriously.)

The Kushner-Trump Administration will likely appreciate Israel’s attempts at an international, diplomatic putsch. Trump has already endorsed the Saudi crackdown to ostensibly “neutralize Iran.” The president now stands with the Clintons and the Bushes along the Saudi-Israeli-American Axis Of Angels, as far as foreign policy goes.  But not everyone in the Old Right, America-First, anti-dumb-wars camp IS THAT PLEASED.

UPDATE (11/13):

UPDATED (1/2/019): Meir Shalev: Easily One Of The Greatest Novelists

Uncategorized

I’ve been reading two classic novels by Meir Shalev in Hebrew, in the hope of reviving my extant Hebrew reading skills.

The one completed some time ago was Roman Rusi (“A Russian Novel,” translated), which was changed to The Blue Mountain. A lot hangs on the translation, naturally, but having read “Roman Rusi” (aka “The Blue Mountain“) both in English and Hebrew, I can say Hillel Halkin’s translation of that book was superb.

Shalev, for the richness of his descriptions and the depth of the depictions and characters (down to the animals), is up there with the greatest writers. Nabokov of the Israelis? Maybe, but Shalev doesn’t have Nabokov’s prurient preoccupied with decadence.

Even finer than “The Blue Mountain” is “As A Few Days,” which is currently tearing at my heart. Read it (and my non-fiction books, of course). It also goes by the title “Four Meals” or “The Loves of Judith.”

UPDATED (1/2/019):

Amos Oz was not a good writer, Tom Segev. He had nothing on Agnon, of whom he was madly jealous, or on Meir Shalev, a literary giant. I recently completed Oz’ latest door-stopper in Hebrew: undisciplined, cumbersome, narcissistic. Absolutely no literary finesse.

MORE.

UPDATED (2/5): When I First Began To Suspect That Muslims ‘Embellish’

Uncategorized

Call me biased—lowlife lefties will—but it started when I was very small. (I certainly had, still have, a good memory, because I remember it all.) With no warning, the 1967 Six-Day War began. It was quite safe for an Israeli child to wander about alone along the paths of the Yishuv, in which we lived. That’s what I was doing at the time. A man grabbed me and carried me down to the underground shelter. The border with Jordan was close by back then, and we could hear the artillery. Someone switched on the radio. We tuned into the infamous broadcasts out of Cairo, according to which Israel was losing the war.

Even as the Egyptian air force was wiped out, and its ground forces were getting slaughtered in the deserts of Sinai, Egyptian radio was broadcasting its glorious victories: They were bombing Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, destroying the enemy with impunity, etc.

“Itbuch el yuhood” were the words most frequently deployed. (“Slaughter the Jews.”)

Translating the rest, the grown-ups explained that the crazed broadcaster was saying that the Jews were being thrown into the sea, but not to worry, children, the Arabs were lying for a change.

Yes, I confess. I heard that a lot when I was growing up in an Israel that was once non-leftist and patriotic, reality oriented (today, thanks to American influence, it’s more like America).

We won the war in six days and no Jew was thrown into the sea. Of course, it was also true, against common Israeli myth, that many on the other side fought valiantly. Nevertheless, stereotypes are often supported by evidence.

That’s what crosses the mind when I see the many tall tales about how many Muslims have already died en route because of President Donald Trump’s travel ban. For one of many instances, see “Fake news: Iraqi-American lied when he claimed that his mother died due to Trump ban.”

Do you get the impression immigrants you don’t necessarily want here will do anything (including to play guilt-riddled, gullible Americans), in order to gain unfettered access to the US and its generous welfare programs?

* By the way, the Muslim world that attacked Israel, back in those good old days, was much more secular. If anything, it has regressed.

UPDATE (2/2):

Linda Sarsour: