Blog/February 2014/Feb 14th
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< Blog | February 2014
| Feb 14th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
Hi, again!
Esther and I are rabble-rousers! This Thursday we went to a political event here in our fair town, whose purpose was to protest the lack of building in the “E1” area — more on that in a minute. Work progressed nicely on all fronts, I won’t go into details except to say that like Sponjetta, I was in my studio all week. Sarah is on vacation and has spent her time watching movies (for homework, folks, yeah…). And Daniela and Jeremy are weathering a series of storms, leaving them snowbound and cold. Jeremy thinks that’s the best birthday present ever!
So Esther and I attended a “massive march and protest” here in Maʿale Adumim. The event started near the city-hall (not too far from where we live), and the march was from there to the “E1” area — a hill which is supposed to become a new neighborhood for M”A, and which every Israeli government has declared would be built. But, alas! the hill contains only a (very large) police station and no dwelling units.
We arrived fairly early, when there were but a thousand or so people milling about. As we waited for things to start (things in Israel rarely start “on-time”), my friend and I were approached by an Italian journalist, who interviewed us for some Italian paper. There were video crews from Australia and media from other places as well. Of interest to us, mainly, is the Israeli media – depending on who you read or listen to, you may get very different notions of what and why:
- HaAretz said: Thousands of young Israelis marched to “protest talks with the Palestinians”.
- Yediot said: Rightist ministers, MKs protest: There will be only one state.
- The Jerusalem Post said: Right-wing activists rally on E1 against giving up land on West Bank
- Arutz-7 said: Over 15,000 March to Demand E1 Building
Of the four of these, only Arutz-7 put the actual reason for the march in the headline, which is interesting. If you only read HaAretz, you might think only a bunch of “youth” were protesting “talks”. Not all of us are “youths”. You might also think the point was to protest “the talks”, which is somewhat ludicrous. Though it is probably true that most of the participants think there is no point whatsoever in “the talks” and that Kerry should stay at home and leave us alone, that had nothing really to do with why people were participating. But you know that, so I won’t belabor the point.
Also interesting is that depending on when you came, you would come up with a different estimate of how many “protesters” were there. Like I said, when we first showed up there were a thousand or so. When I left about an hour and a half later, there were at least 6,000. Esther stayed on, and reported that on the way to E1 the hills were crawling with people – many thousands. So it’s likely that A7’s estimate of 15,000 is pretty close to accurate.
Sitting on the lawn at the gathering-spot did not help my sciatica; and the long hilly walk did not help Esther’s hips. So after the event we were both gimping around as if we were thirty years older. Still, we’re not “youths” as HaAretz would paint us…
Some other things you may find interesting (or not):
- A journalist challenged hackers to investigate him. Very interesting and sobering read about just how much information is “out there” and available to sufficiently motivated people.
- Giant leap for nuclear fusion. “Fusion generators” have been avidly sought-after for at least the past fifty years, because they are a “clean” alternative to almost every other energy source. We’re still a good long way off from having fusion-power, but it looks like some progress is being made.
- For the next US elections, I’m voting the Palpatine/Vader ticket. At least you know what you’re getting then!
- And for your next flight, why not fly Palestinian Airways? Brought to you by the inventors of airline hijacking. It’s the explosive way to fly!
Nobody here but us chickens this week. We’re going to a friends for shabbat lunch, so the menu this week is a bit short:
grilled steak,
eggplant steaks,
oven fried potatoes,
roasted vegetables,
okra in tomato sauce,
rice
and chocolate cake.
Until next week,
shabbat shalom!
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