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Blog/August 2018/Aug 24th

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August 24th

More of the same, I’m afraid. Working, eating, sleeping; rinse, and repeat.

The highlight of the week was our trip to points West to visit Sarah at her work and to go out with her for an evening meal. I don’t think we realized just how small the store she works in is, nor how ritzy the stores around it are. I felt like I was back in LA on Rodeo drive.

We finally ran out of the almost 20lbs of coffee my brother ob”m left. So today is my first cup of the “Starbucks” coffee beans we brought back from the US 10 months ago. It’s not very good, to be honest, but a “Costco” sized bag of it awaits our drinkage.

This week I read an article entitled What The Left - And The Right - Get Wrong About The Settlements. The author makes an effort to be even-handed in his analysis, but he gets a number of things quite wrong. Read it. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

I’ll ignore his use of the tendentious term “settlers”, but his characterization of them as primarily Ashkenazi (e.g. Jews of European descent) is simply wrong. Both Maale Adummim (where I live) and Ariel (the other big city in “the territories”) — which between the two of them contain a large portion of the “settler” population — are majority non-Ashkenazi. A simple check would have verified that. As a matter of fact, the street I live on has a super-majority of non-Ashkenazim. The majority of synagogues in the city are not Ashkenazi. For that matter, the Mayor isn’t, either.

The author supports his claim by mentioning a statistic that “the United States comes in first place when it comes to the number of immigrants moving to the settlements”. That may be true, but the vast majority of people living there are not immigrants. In our town, Anglo immigrants make up maybe 5% of the population. He also presumes that immigrants from the US are all Ashkenazim; my wife and several of our friends would take issue with that.

He states that those on the “Right” say, “Jews are indigenous to the land and the Palestinians are not, often even denying the existence of a “Palestinian people,” concluding that ultimately they have no right to a state of their own. Both sides are wrong.”

Well he, in fact, is wrong. The Arabs in Israel whose families have been here for more than 5 generations, are in the minority. Since Arab family names often indicate place of origin, it’s quite entertaining to see how many of them are originally Egyptian, Syrian, North African, etc. There are, of course, some who have been here for many generations. There are also Jews whose families have been here for many generations. But that is besides the point, which is that Jews have continually resided in the Land since Biblical times — and there is ample evidence of the veracity of that claim.

But prior to the Muslim invasions in the 7th century, there were very few Arabs in the Land; and during all the centuries when Arabs had political and military control of the Land, they never claimed it was “their homeland”, nor did they attempt to rebuild it or settle it.

He asks, “How many Palestinians or Israeli-Arabs live in settlement communities? These are Palestinian-free communities which have selection committees to decide who “belongs” in these communities, and who does not “belong” (Hint: it’s Arabs!).”

So first of all: only some communities have such committees. My town doesn’t. Those which do, exclude Jews who don’t meet their standards. Because guess what? It’s Jews who apply to live in those places, not Arabs. But that’s besides the point, which is: exactly how many Jews live in Israeli-Arab cities, towns, and villages? Not to mention those Arab towns which are under PA control? The answer is: not bloody many. So please, spare me the righteous indignation. For better or worse, Jews prefer living with Jews, and Arabs prefer living with Arabs; and while there is no compulsion to do so, people do it anyway. Because they’re people who share common language and culture among other reasons.

I’ll stop here; the blog’s getting too long and my blood-pressure is rising. Partly due to the coffee.

Things of note:


On the work-front, I’m getting closer to making the next release of 8th. Still a fair amount of work ahead, but definite progress is being made. I got a lot of positive feedback in the “social media” world for my post on using PGP to validate a script.

And most important of all: happy 3 month birthday to Naomi and Gabriel!

The weather continues being pleasant and looks to stay that way.

We’ve got guests this shabbat. Prior to their relocation to points South, we’ll feed them:
homemade ḥalla, baked chicken, roasted potatoes, coleslaw, fried eggplant, various salatim, and chocolate brownies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!


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