Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is alleged to have presented Obama with Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, which documents the American satirist’s “post Civil War tour” to Palestine.
The New York Times disagrees with Bibi’s deductions, drawn from Twain’s impressions. Nevertheless, it reports the following:
“Nine years ago, in a book of his own, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, Mr. Netanyahu cited some of the observations in Innocents Abroad, about how sparsely populated certain parts of the land were at the time of Twain’s visit, as proof of ‘what every civilized and educated person knew at the close of the nineteenth century: that the land was indeed largely empty.’ Mr. Netanyahu quoted several passages from Twain’s book to support his argument that, even decades after the American writer visited the Holy Land, ‘this wasteland of Palestine,’ with ‘its miniscule Arab presence, making use of virtually none of the available land for the people’s own meager needs, could hardly be considered a serious counter to the claim of millions of Jews the world over to a state of their own.'”
“Twain’s description of Jerusalem under Muslim rule” … was far from flattering:
Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—the eternal “bucksheesh.” To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.
[SNIP]
Arabs trashed Palestine and never dried one swamp. Jews dried the swamps—died in droves of malaria doing so—planted orchards, started industries, and generally built the place into what it is today.
Past is prologue: Palestinians continue to punish the land.
As a fan of chamber music and hard-core progressive rock, I don’t pay much attention to pop music, all the more so considering the genre has been overrun with the toxic sludge of American, booty shaking bimbos with bedroom voices and no talent.
Me on “cut-and-paste” hip-hop electronica: “The P. Diddy or Missy Elliot-type electronica entails taking ready-made sample CDs on which drums, keyboards and guitar have been recorded. Aided by a computer program operable even by a simian, the mouse is used to drag and drop these samples anywhere along the track. Riffs and beats can also be dropped in the software way into the “song.” An entire band of backing tracks is thus “produced” with a computer and more often than not without a single instrumentalist.”
The overwhelming nature of the bad makes one forget that there is such a thing as a well-executed, pleasant warble, accompanied by competent musicians.
The gifted Noa is a striking Israeli Yemeni singer. Now Noa, in collaboration with Mira Awad, an Arab-Israeli talent, have united to represent Israel at the Eurovision. These are musical, intelligent, gracious, modest women, who speak soberly about the issues, and do not vaporize in the vernacular of Oprah—another American pop-pollutant.
I’ve heard some boosters tout American cultural products as export-worthy. I’ve argued that: “American mass entertainment continues to spread around the world like the cultural kudzu it is, not because of its quality or the vigor of its values, but because, in form and in content, it’s as easy as a prostitute on a street corner. It demands nothing but for the performer and his audience to relinquish artistic standards and shed inhibitions.”
There must be another way
There must be another way
There must be another
Must be another way
Beautiful Noa in an old performance—interesting Yemeni beat, and a stage presence that is powerful, alluring, without being remotely slutty:
The Yemeni beat, Arabic beat, so so intricate and interesting; yet so foreign to North American ears schooled in the hip-hop, rap, deadening hump-a-long .
Lyrics
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s very violent
A bouquet of violets
Lies trampled to the ground
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s very violent
A bouquet of violets
Lies trampled to the ground
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s hot and steamy
Don’t go around too dreamy
You’ll be trampled to the ground
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Can I find a future here?
Everything is so unclear
(Give it up, give it up, give it up)
Can I ever find a life?
Under threat of fire and knife
(Give it up, give it up, give it up)
Changing tide
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
It’s a game we play
And it’s very scary
With all those maniacs running around
Y’know
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour, 18 years old
Caught under the wheels
It’s a pretty bad deal
But this is my hometown
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Changing tide
Changing tide
What a great move, from the only people to have stood by my homeland, South Africa. The tactic taken by the Israelis is aggressive. It accomplishes two things: It makes it a little harder for the hypocrites who monopolize the discourse on justice to get away with murder. It achieves a measure of justice by calling a crime a crime. An added bonus it that an Israeli outfit here is actually bucking American foreign policy.
I can almost sense the bitterness in this BBC News report (sent by john peter maher):
“The Israeli Almagor Terrorist Victims’ Association is about to file a lawsuit against NATO officials who gave the green light for the bombing of Serbia in 1999.
The association elected to take the move in response to the decision by Judge Fernando Andreu of the Spanish Audencia Nacional (National Court) to launch an investigation into Israel’s bombing of Gaza in 2002, when one Hamas leader was killed and 14 people were wounded.
In the suit, Almagor cites the names of a number of high-profile Spaniards, including EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, who was NATO secretary general from 1995 to 1999, as well as the names of certain officials from other European countries and the United States.
Almagor Director Meir Indor told the media in Israel that the lawsuit would be completed shortly.
He confirmed that the Serbian case might open a Pandora’s Box, which could make certain individuals think twice before deciding to accept any lawsuits that the Palestinians filed against Israel.
‘We see this as a case highlighting the double standards of Europeans who are accusing Israel of war crimes, while at the same time, those very same countries, as part of NATO, committed crimes that were a lot worse,’ Indor said.
He stressed that every European NATO member-state would be mentioned and that the suit would be filed in every country that decided to file similar actions against Israel for war crimes recently committed either in the aforesaid case, or, more recently, during the Israeli offensive in Gaza at the turn of the year.
‘Even now Israeli Army generals cannot travel to the UK for fear of being arrested the moment they set foot in the airport,’ said the Almagor president.
The organization’s delegate in Serbia was, he said, a certain Mr. D., an Israeli businessman who was caught in the crossfire when the air strikes began, and who works in Serbia to this day.
Serbian citizens have welcomed the news that Almagor has launched their case, says Mr. D.
Almagor purports to being a humanitarian organization that represents the victims of global terror, not only in Israel, and is endeavoring to obtain authorization from Serbian victims of the bombing to present their case.”
Update: In response to the comment: Sure, this is a self-serving action on the part of the Israelis. Altruism is overrated–and, at times, wrong-headed. You serve others best by serving yourself first and foremost. Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand and all that stuff. Good stuff.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new foreign minister, has given his maiden speech, which has left Daniel Pipes elated. It’s hard to disagree, given that it was through strength that Menachem Begin, a hardliner Likudnik, made peace with Egypt. “Here are some of the topics Lieberman covered in his 1,100-word stem-winder”:
Egypt: Lieberman praises Cairo as “a stabilizing factor in the regional system and perhaps even beyond that” but puts the Mubarak government on notice that he will only go there if his counterpart comes to Jerusalem.
Repeating the word “peace”: Lieberman poured scorn on prior Israeli governments: “The fact that we say the word ‘peace’ twenty times a day will not bring peace any closer.”
The burden of peace: “I have seen all the proposals made so generously by Ehud Olmert, but I have not seen any result.” Now, things have changed: “the other side also bears responsibility” for peace and must ante up.
The Road Map: The speech’s most surprising piece of news is Lieberman’s focus on and endorsement of the Road Map, a 2003 diplomatic initiative he voted against at the time but which is, as he puts it, “the only document approved by the cabinet and by the Security Council.” He calls it “a binding resolution” that the new government must implement. In contrast, he specifically notes that the government is not bound by the Annapolis accord of 2007 (“Neither the cabinet nor the Knesset ever ratified it”).
Implementing the Road Map: Lieberman intends to “act exactly” according to the letter of the Road Map, including its Tenet and Zinni sub-documents. Then comes one of his two central statements of the speech:
