Category Archives: South-Africa

Updated: The Golem* Goldstone Goes To Gaza

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Law, Palestinian Authority, South-Africa, UN

From my new WND column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza”:

“When introducing Judge Goldstone, Fareed Zakaria described the judge as having made his name, among other acts of greatness, in pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid in his home country of South Africa.

Ostracized for his convictions, this writer’s father – Rabbi Ben Isaacson – was a leading anti-apartheid activist. Goldstone had no such history of protest, father assures me. The roaming judge attached himself like a limpet mine to the anti-apartheid cause only once it became fashionable, safe and professionally expedient.

Goldstone’s Wiki biography corroborates father’s recollection. The judge joined the cause du jour in ‘the latter years of apartheid in South Africa.’ Goldstone’s “courageous” judicial decisions in the cause of freedom, moreover, comported with what South Africa’s Western system of Dutch-Roman law provided – a system currently being replaced, by the African National Congress, with a blend of tribal and totalitarian laws.

To this expatriate South African, the most anodyne assertion Goldstone made to zombie Zakaria was this one…”

Read the complete column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Jan. 9): A few readers, some via my WND mail box, have told me I’ve erred as far as the meaning of Golem goes. I’m relatively confident that my commonplace use of the term is accurate (if perhaps not true to the original meaning), so I’ve left it. Usually, I hurry to correct blatant errors.

So why am I comfortable with the column’s usage?

I’m an ex-Israeli. My first language is Hebrew. Although I once spoke and wrote a sharp Hebrew (much like my English), slang has since (as in the US and the UK) changed older, popular usage. As old-timers like myself are in the habit of saying, no one speaks Yerushalmic Hebrew on the news any longer as the wonderful Haim Yavin used to. Yavin was the most elegant anchorman in looks and language.

Back to the topic. “Golem” in popular, modern usage is a derogatory term. Call an Israeli of my age group (still way younger than Yavin, of course) a Golem, and, while you’ve not wounded him mortally, you have, in good humor, berated him.

Oscar Reads Broad Sides, So Can You

Africa, Family, Ilana Mercer, Relatives, Science, South-Africa

Oscar is my recent rescue: a rare Cape Parrot. Or, more accurately, an Un-Cape Parrot (Poicephalus fuscicollis). One more homie. (You’ve already met T. Cup, my adorable, feisty, Senegalese Parrot.) Oscar is even closer to home (I hail from South Africa; his forefathers from South-Central Africa.)

Oscar_on_cage

The African parrots are the smartest of the Psittacidea family. I wonder why? Is it evolution’s answer to the sorry state of the Continent? Perhaps Africa’s parrots have evolved to take over. (Humor alert for the grim among you.)

The African Grey, in particular, is the most intelligent parrot. It can acquire upwards of 1000 words, sentences included, and displays considerable cognition. Observe Einstein in action. By her own admission, she’s a “Super Star.”

The pioneering researcher into African Greys is Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Here she is on CNN explaining how her work with the late Alex (for “Avian Learning Experiment”) shattered all preconceptions about the parrot as no more than a mimic. Pitted against a primate, Alex always won out.

Here Dr. Pepperberg both demonstrates and explains Alex’s cognitive and communicative accomplishments. (Of course, Alex would never have committed the syntactical infelicity committed by the human who titled this YouTube segment: “ALEX – One of the most smartest parrots ever!”)

My Oscar has the potential to be as smart as the Grey, but first he has to overcome the stunting effects of shop life. No matter how dedicated the breeder, three years with little individualized attention leaves its mark on such a sentient, sensitive, highly intelligent creature. In the case of Oscar, it is a plucking habit.

Here Oscar has climbed to the top of his giant castle, and is posing alongside my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Ask Oscar. Get your copy (or copies) now!

And do pray that no more little, fluffy green feathers find their way into my gentle giant’s mother-of-pearl beak.

'Invictus'

Film, Hollywood, Race, Racism, South-Africa, Sport

I had to search the dictionary for the grandiose title of Clint Eastwood’s new film, “Invictus.” If so inclined, you can read up about it too, although all you need to know, in this context, is that the “short poem by the British poet William Ernest Henley is the source of a number of familiar clichés and quotations.” “Invictus” is Latin for “unconquered.”

For the sake of its viewers, I do hope that “Invictus” is not, as The Independent promised, an “over-reverent biopic, but … instead a surprisingly entertaining sports movie which for the most part follows the conventions of the genre.”

Here’s what you need to know about the sainted Mandela and the game of Rugby, excerpted from my near-complete book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post Apartheid South Africa:

“Of late, local and international establishment press has showered Mr. Mandela with more praise for serving as the mighty Springboks’ mascot.

The Springboks are the South African national rugby team, and the reigning world champions. But has Mandela ever raised his authoritative voice against the ANC’s plans to force this traditionally Afrikaner game to become racially representative? Not on your life. … Has Mandela piped up about the ANC’s unremitting attacks on Afrikaans as the language of instruction in Afrikaner schools and universities? Again, no.” (©2009 by ilana mercer)

‘Invictus’

Film, Hollywood, Race, Racism, South-Africa, Sport

I had to search the dictionary for the grandiose title of Clint Eastwood’s new film, “Invictus.” If so inclined, you can read up about it too, although all you need to know, in this context, is that the “short poem by the British poet William Ernest Henley is the source of a number of familiar clichés and quotations.” “Invictus” is Latin for “unconquered.”

For the sake of its viewers, I do hope that “Invictus” is not, as The Independent promised, an “over-reverent biopic, but … instead a surprisingly entertaining sports movie which for the most part follows the conventions of the genre.”

Here’s what you need to know about the sainted Mandela and the game of Rugby, excerpted from my near-complete book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post Apartheid South Africa:

“Of late, local and international establishment press has showered Mr. Mandela with more praise for serving as the mighty Springboks’ mascot.

The Springboks are the South African national rugby team, and the reigning world champions. But has Mandela ever raised his authoritative voice against the ANC’s plans to force this traditionally Afrikaner game to become racially representative? Not on your life. … Has Mandela piped up about the ANC’s unremitting attacks on Afrikaans as the language of instruction in Afrikaner schools and universities? Again, no.” (©2009 by ilana mercer)