Friday, briefly

Posted on 11/12/2010 by Meryl Yourish

So it’s only bad when Israel does it: Remember all the brouhaha over Israel’s refusing to go along with the UN’s one-sided Gaza war investigation? Well, there doesn’t seem to be an eye being batted over Hezbollah declaring that no matter what the UN investigation into Rafik Hariri’s assassination turns up, they won’t turn over the suspects. He has even threatened a coup over the results. So, how many editorials, op-eds, and statements you figure were made over how Israel should cooperate with the UN no matter what? Shyeah. What time is it? That’s right, Israeli Double Standard Time—but no worries. It only occurs on days that end with a “y.”

Yes, Glenn Beck was over the top. I can’t believe I have to say this, but Media Matters isn’t wrong on this part of their most recent complaint against Glenn Beck. (Broken clock, etc.)

On his November 10 radio show, Beck described how Soros, who was born in Hungary to Orthodox Jewish parents, “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.”

Soros did not help send Jews to the camps, and Beck is wrong to say so. The ADL is right to call him out on this, and he should be ashamed of himself. There are plenty of other rotten things to say about Soros, but he did NOT help round up the Jews and send them off to the death camps.

Posted in Holocaust, Israeli Double Standard Time, Lebanon | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

On Veteran’s Day

Posted on 11/11/2010 by Meryl Yourish

I really don’t have any profound thoughts. All I can say to those of you who are or were in the armed forces: Thanks for doing what I didn’t have the courage to do.

One thing I will say: This ex-liberal hippie-type who came of age in the 70s never, EVER disrespected the military, even when I was completely against the Vietnam war. I’m proud of that, at least.

My nephew is enlisting in the Marines. I expect I’ll have more to say this time next year.

Posted in American Scene | 2 Comments

Peace: it’s not about what might have but about what couldn’t have been

Posted on 11/11/2010 by Soccerdad

Last week, Former President Clinton wrote an op-ed making the fanciful claim that there would have been peace in the Middle East had Yitzchak Rabin not been murdered. I showed from the historical record that his claim was not accurate.

But there’s another assumption that’s faulty here. Implicity Clinton is blaming Israel. But by making Yitzchak Rabin the one indispensible person for peace to succeed he ignores that Rabin’s positions and those of current Prime Minister Netanyahu are actually pretty close. It’s a point that Yaacov Lozowick makes in two recent posts. In one he writes:

Mitchell Plitnick and many of his co-activists seem to accept the Palestinian narrative: the peace process was supposed to end with Israel on the 1967 border, Jerusalem divided, and some Israeli accommodation of the refugee problem. This, however, is counter factual. No Israeli government before 2000 ever accepted those positions (Yitzchak Rabin was openly against them); and while arguably some official Israeli negotiators may have come close since 2000, they were never authorized to do so by the Israeli electorate.

In the other he writes, more generally:

But perhaps it might be reasonable for self-proclaimed Israeli champions of peace to recognize that on Jerusalem, their anointed saint the martyred Rabin held the same position Netanyahu does.

But even if Yitzchak Rabin promoted the Peace Now vision of peace there was a major reason even such an accomodating would not have brought peace. Israel wasn’t negotiating with itself to make peace. It was negotiating with an unrepentant terrorist as Meryl reminds us:

The AP also did not cover things that Arafat said that utterly belied his cover of seeking peace:
Our basic aim is to liberate the land from the Mediterranean Seas to the Jordan River. We are not concerned with what took place in June 1967 or in eliminating the the consequences of the June war. The Palestinian revolution’s basic concern is the uprooting of the Zionist entity from our land and liberating it.
There is also the confession from Hamas that Arafat directed them to commit terror attacks during the height of peace negotiations with Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Tagged | Comments Off on Peace: it’s not about what might have but about what couldn’t have been

Christian woman sentenced to death in Pakistan for defaming the Prophet Mohammed

Posted on 11/11/2010 by SnoopyTheGoon

The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Asia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed.

Weigh carefully what this quote says and means. There is no mention of religious fanatics, fundamentalists, Islamists, Al Qaeda, Wahhabi etc.

It is regular folks, described as “Muslim mob, including clerics”, baying for blood. Regular folks, like you, me and, of course, the Rage Boy:

So, going a few days back to that uninspired and overused:

I made clear that America is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. Instead, all of us must work together to defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates, who have no claim to be leaders of any religion –– certainly not a great, world religion like Islam.

Does anyone want to reconsider? No? OK, I shall do some homework of my own then…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Posted in Politics, Religion, World | 4 Comments

Thursday morning briefs

Posted on 11/11/2010 by Meryl Yourish

The more you learn, the worse it gets: Really, first we learn (shock!) that German diplomats were complicit in murdering Jews. Now we learn that at least a third of the German war effort was supported by stolen Jewish wealth and property. One of the Germans who stole Jewish wealth? George Soros’ Christian guardian, paid by Soros’ father to swear that George was his godson. You can’t call Soros a collaborator, as some have. But the lesson he learned from that sure seems to be that it’s okay to take things from other people regardless of the cost.

UN keeps up the Gaza cover story: They’ve got to do something in order to guarantee their jobs. So of course, even though they swore for years that the Gazans were starving, desperately in need of medical aid, and about to keel over from various diseases unless the blockade was lifted, now that they got the blockade effectively lifted? It’s still not enough. The fact that a terror organization is still smuggling weapons into Gaza? Irrelevant. The fact that John Ging needs automatic weapons for his bodyguards to protect him from Hamas? Irrelevant. The only relevant fact is the Palestinians can’t have everything they want.

Good for the goose, etc.: Danny Ayalon is right. If the Palestinians are third- and fourth-generation refugees, then so are the Jews who fled from Arab lands after the founding of Israel. Then Israel can make a one-for-one swap of the original refugees, and everything is settled. Will that happen? Sure, when pigs sprout wings and fly.

Fifteen miles on the Irani Canal: Just when you think the nutcases can’t get any nuttier, they give you something else to laugh at. Iran, Venezuela, and Nicaragua say they’re going to build a rival to the Panama Canal. Because it’s going to be so easy to build, just like it was to build the Panama Canal. Good luck with that, guys! (Well, at least it got me to find one of the songs from my childhood. Suzanne Vega covered it.)

Posted in Gaza, Holocaust, Iran, Israeli Double Standard Time, United Nations | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

But Sunnis would never ally themselves with Shi’ites …

Posted on 11/10/2010 by Soccerdad

Tweeted by Martin Kramer – Ehud Ya’ari writes:

For the last few months, a forty-three-page Arabic-language booklet has been emailed to Hamas activists in the Gaza Strip and to select members of the group in the West Bank and elsewhere. Titled The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, this new publication represents the most important attempt to date to connect the growing cooperation between Hamas and its Iranian mentors to religious affinities, rather than political expediency. The argument, in essence, is that the Muslim Brotherhood — with Hamas as its Palestinian branch — is a natural partner of Iran, with which it shares a common set of values and a joint vision of the revival of the caliphate, despite the divide that historically separates Sunnis from Shiites and often sets them against each other.

Hmm. So I shouldn’t be surprised to read that Hamas Invites Ahmadinejad to Visit Gaza(via Daily Alert Blog)

So then Iran sees Sunni Hamas as much as its ally as Shi’ite Hezbollah. Iran and its proxies know that their enemies are the Great Satan and the Little Satan; differing religious beliefs are subordinate. The West must not ignore this.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Iran, Israel | Tagged | 1 Comment

The whitewashing a of terrorist mass murderer

Posted on 11/10/2010 by Meryl Yourish

Arafat’s dead, but the tongue-baths and whitewashing live on. Wow, what a nifty-keen profile of the Yasser Arafat museum in the AP! Why, if you read this profile, you would hardly know that the biggest mass-murderer of Jews since Adolf Hitler was, well, a mass-murderer of Jews who was almost solely responsible for the wave of suicide attacks that now threaten the entire world. Yes, it was he who popularized them, though it was Hamas and PIJ that performed most of them. The AP’s take on Arafat?

In his four decades as Palestinian leader, Arafat was a complex and often divisive figure – branded by some as an arch-terrorist and celebrated by others as the father of the Palestinian national movement. His nomadic lifestyle, penchant for late-night meetings and flair for dramatic gestures fanned a fascination that has outlived him.

Yeah. “Some.” Arafat was the father of modern terrorism. He founded Fatah in 1959, while the West Bank and Gaza were under Jordanian and Egyptian control. He took over the PLO in 1964.

In Syria, however, he managed to recruit members by offering them higher incomes to enable his armed attacks against Israel. Fatah’s manpower was incremented further after Arafat decided to offer much higher salaries to members of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), the regular military force of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was created by the Arab League in the summer of 1964. On December 31 of that same year, a squad from al-Assifa, the armed branch of Fatah at the time, attempted to infiltrate Israel, but they were intercepted and detained by Lebanese security forces. Several other raids with Fatah’s poorly trained and badly equipped fighters followed this incident. Some were successful, others failed in their missions. Arafat often led these incursions personally.[12]

He killed Jews long before Israel controlled “Palestinian” lands. And then there was Black September, where the PLO sought to take over Jordan, and thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Jordanian army. That’s all on him. It’s not mentioned at all in the article. Because of course, Arabs killing Arabs gets a pass. As did his years of terrorism, which the AP boiled down to this:

In the 1970s, Arafat’s name became a household word after Palestinians launched a series of hijackings and attacks to publicize their struggle. In 1974, he famously addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York, entering the chamber wearing a holster and carrying an olive branch.

The AP also did not cover things that Arafat said that utterly belied his cover of seeking peace:

Our basic aim is to liberate the land from the Mediterranean Seas to the Jordan River. We are not concerned with what took place in June 1967 or in eliminating the the consequences of the June war. The Palestinian revolution’s basic concern is the uprooting of the Zionist entity from our land and liberating it.

There is also the confession from Hamas that Arafat directed them to commit terror attacks during the height of peace negotiations with Israel.

And last, but not least, they repeat the lie that Israel poisoned Arafat, adding “balance” by saying that the claimants have no proof.

Yasser Arafat is dead, but his PR department lives on.

Posted in AP Media Bias, Terrorism | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Legality and morality of drone attacks

Posted on 11/10/2010 by SnoopyTheGoon

Warning: long post!

The use of armed drones in the conflict areas is not exactly new, as are arguments for and against the use of this weapon. Found to be quite effective in getting to the various terrorist chiefs and their lieutenants, drones and their use are questioned for the two chief legal reasons:

Legal Reason One. Is the extra-judicial execution of a person legal, even if there seems to be enough intelligence proving the person’s terrorist activities? If you listen to US State Department legal advisor Harold Koh, the drone strikes are legal because of the right to self-defense. If you consider other voices, including these of some left-wing politicos and lawyers, the picture is strikingly different:

US Congressman Dennis Kucinich asserted that the United States was violating international law by carrying out strikes against a country that never attacked the United States.

Whatever you think of Kucinich and his free use of very vague term “international law”, the argument sounds plausible: Pakistan as a country didn’t attack the United States. And we didn’t even mention the targeted person’s entitlement to the due process of the law… and a new challenge, that of targeting terrorists who happen to be American citizens:

The Obama administration will on Monday try to persuade a U.S. judge to throw out a lawsuit challenging its program to capture or kill U.S. citizens who have joined militant groups like al Qaeda, including Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Continue reading →

Posted in Israel | 2 Comments

Playing into Hamas’s hands

Posted on 11/09/2010 by Soccerdad

Thomas Friedman who is an expert – “expert” in this case means being able to say things with no factual support and have no one question you – wrote The Reality Principle in 2003.

Have you noticed how often Israel kills a Hamas activist and the victim is described by Israelis as ”a senior Hamas official” or a ”key operative”? This has led me to wonder: How many senior Hamas officials could there be? We’re not talking about I.B.M. here. We’re talking about a ragtag terrorist group. By now Israel should have killed off the entire Hamas leadership twice. Unless what is happening is something else, something I call Palestinian math: Israel kills one Hamas operative and three others volunteer to take his place, in which case what Israel is doing is actually self-destructive.

Note his certainty. Killing terrorists actually is counterproductive. He did not acknowledge that fighting terrorism may be a long process. He merely assumed – with no evidence – that killing terrorists simply breeds more terrorists.

I wonder if he will adjust his thinking because of the recent news that West Bank Terrorist List Dwindles (via Daily Alert Blog via Ha’aretz)

For the first time since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, not a single security suspect is being sought by Israel in the northern West Bank.

In the southern West Bank, there are only a few names on the wanted list, a reflection of both the improved security situation in the West Bank and the increasing cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces.

The last fatal suicide bombing emanating from the northern West Bank occurred in April 2006, committed by Islamic Jihad in Jenin.

In the last year, several major terrorist attacks have been carried out in the West Bank, but Israel located the perpetrators, Fatah members from Nablus and Hamas members from the Hebron area, and killed them.

Among the few wanted figures still at large are Hamas members operating in Hebron.

Friedman, to be sure, was correct in observing that Israel needed help from the PA to accomplish this, but as Barry Rubin points out, that help came due to enlightened self-interest.

Six years ago there were hundreds of them.Israel-PA coordination helps a lot and is partly itself the product of Hamas’s seizure of the Gaza Strip, which scared the hummus out of PA leaders lest they themselves end up deep in the humus.

However, according to Barry Rubin, the current situation is the best that can be hoped for for now. The Palestinian Authority still won’t accept any political solution that is minimally acceptable to Israel. Rather than seeking a solution, the proper approach is to maintain the status quo, until such point that the Palestinians become serious about peace.

That’s in sharp contrast to Friedman’s approach which was that further Israeli concessions would bring peace.

But then Barry Rubin is an academic who actually has studied the situation; Thomas Friedman is basically a pop star who is handsomely paid to express unsupported opinions in an entertaining fashion.

According to Friedman, Israel’s successful anti-terror strategy was playing into Hamas’s hands. I’m guessing that Hamas – in Judea and Samaria – wishes that it hadn’t been quite that successful.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | Tagged | 2 Comments

Tuesday post-op briefs

Posted on 11/09/2010 by Meryl Yourish

My pupils aren’t really dilating, but I can still see to read.

But—but—Hamas would never harm UN personnel: John Ging doesn’t feel safe in Gaza, so Israel has approved four submachine guns for use of his personal bodyguards. Say, how’s that Hamas moderation coming along, guys? Exit statement: Ging needs exactly zero bodyguards when visiting Israel. Hey, I have an idea! Let’s get rid of Hamas, then Ging can do his work without fear.

So that Goldstone civilian body count? Dead as the Hamas terrorists. Hamas has admitted to at least 700 more terrorist deaths than they did after the end of Operation Cast Lead, which puts even the Elder’s body count off—in favor of fewer dead civilians. You know what’s missing from this story? Any reaction from the organizations that slammed Israel for all those “civilian” casualties. Are we surprised about that? Please. Have we been reading or writing this blog for ages? Would Meryl love to see someone question Richard Goldstone about this on camera? You betcha!

So much for that Obama Arab outreach: The Saudi prince says there’s NFW that Saudi Arabia will make any kind of gesture to Israel unless Israel vacates to the pre-1967 borders. Period. End of story. You know, if anyone in the Obama administration had been reading this blog, they could have saved themselves a world of trouble trying to convince the Arabs to make any kind of gesture of peace toward Israel.

So howcome they’re still arresting terrorists? I will believe that the PA is truly cooperating with Israel when there are no more arrests of terrorists, anywhere. But Ha’aretz says the PA security forces are truly cooperating with the IDF, and that there hasn’t been a major terror suspect arrest in quite some time. (Psst… they’re all hanging out in Gaza.)

EU to Israel: Stop building in Jerusalem. Meryl to EU: Stop telling Jews what to do. You lost that right over the centuries of pogroms and annihilation. Shorter Meryl: STFU. Oh, wait. It’s just Jew-hater Catherine Ash[ole]ton. Well, STFU anyway, you Jew-hating witch.

Well, that’s that, then: John Kerry is telling the Lebanese to just accept the results of the Hariri assassination tribunal. I’m sure they’ll listen to him. Sending him to Syria kept Baby Assad from firming up ties with Iran. Oh. Wait.

Breakfast time for me and the kitties. This is what comes of going to bed at 10:30. Stupid daylight savings time. Up an hour early.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media Bias | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

The little anti-Israel lies

Posted on 11/08/2010 by Soccerdad

In a recent essay describing her alienation from NPR, Bookworm identified the first point of departure:

There was only one problem with this neatly enclosed little universe: Israel. You see, unlike stories about domestic politics, where my only understanding of the facts came from NPR itself, when it came to Israel, I actually knew one important thing: Israel wanted to live peacefully on the small plot of land given her by both the League of Nations and the UN, and won by her in subsequent wars; and the Palestinians wanted every Jew in the world dead. This meant that all the spin NPR put out about Israeli brutalities against innocent Palestinians, and the poor, suffering, peace-loving Palestinians, didn’t touch me. I knew NPR was spinning or, worse, lying.

The problem is that, once you realize that a narrator is comfortable abandoning the truth, you start to wonder, “Where does that end? I know NPR is lying when it tries to make a moral relativism argument re Israel or, worse, when it presents the Israeli military as an out-of-control killing machine, so I have to wonder if it’s lying about other things too.”

What’s remarkable is how many lies propagated by the media – not just NPR – and anti-Israel activists (but I repeat myself) persist.

For example during Cast Lead the Hamas policeman Israel killed were really civilians. Or that during Cast Lead Israel caused an unprecedented amount of collateral damage.

Or that Gaza is so impoverished the population couldn’t afford a second luxury shopping mall or 5 star hotel.

Or that the current moderate Palestinian leadership is committed to living peacefully with israel.

Or that Israel is somehow comparable to South Africa.

Generally, though, outgoing Israeli director of the foreign press office Danny Seaman said (via Barry Rubin):

“There were certain `truths’ that we were told: That if we adopt UN resolutions, there’ll be peace. If we recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination, there’ll be peace. If we remove settlements, there’ll be peace. And over the past 25 years, there’s been a progression in the Israeli position: Israel recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people; relinquished territory; removed settlements.Regarding Lebanon, Israel fulfilled all the UN resolutions.

“Yet the end result was not the peace that we were promised. In no way am I criticizing the efforts for peace. Peace is a strategic necessity for the State of Israel. But here, in this case, these `truths’ that we were promised never came about. On the contrary, it only increased violence, increased extremism. Yet there was a failure by a lot of the media to be intellectually honest, to say `maybe we need to reevaluate….'”

Put a different way, if, in 1993, someone had told you about the terror, diplomatic isolation and perfidy Israel would suffer AFTER engaging in the peace process; you probably would have said, “Why bother?” Israel persisted in pursuing peace with faithless partner’s sponsored by often disloyal friends. One would think that after 17 years, Israel would have earned some benefit of the doubt, if not goodwill. That it hasn’t reflects poorly on those who urge Israel to make peace for its own good.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | 3 Comments

Another wall of Goldstone report crumbles. What now?

Posted on 11/08/2010 by SnoopyTheGoon

During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, Israel targeted the Hamas police infrastructure, killing approximately 250 officers on 27 December 2008. Their status as combatants was disputed and Israel’s actions were widely condemned. The UN investigation into Cast Lead headed by Richard Goldstone stated that:

…[the mission] believes that the assertion on the part of the Government of Israel that ‘an overwhelming majority of the police forces were also members of the Hamas military wing or activists of Hamas or other terrorist organizations’ appears to be an overstatement that has led to prejudicial presumptions against the nature of the police force that may not be justified…

This finally appears to be based on same bullshit as many other pieces of Hamas propaganda.

What now, Judge Goldstone?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Posted in Israel | 2 Comments

Taking more of a break

Posted on 11/07/2010 by Meryl Yourish

You know, getting Lasik surgery does, indeed, take a fair amount out of you, at least if you’re middle-aged.

I’m staying with friends in NJ, and today, for the second day in a row, I saw Bob’s dad. He said, “Oh, you look much better today. Yesterday you had two black eyes.”

Uh….

Well, today, for the first time since I was a child, I watched a movie without wearing glasses. (Megamind. It was fun.) I found myself unconsciously reaching to straighten them from time to time, and I think I should not watch another movie until my eyes settled down some more, but it was nice.

So no, posting will not be returning to normal anytime soon. Tomorrow is a travel day. I’ll be stopping at the office for a bit, then heading back home. I hope to be back to normal by Tuesday, but we shall see.

Got an extra hour of sleep last night, thanks to Daylight Savings Time. Which reminds me… gotta go change the time on these posts.

Posted in Life | 3 Comments

Gabriel Latner and Philip Weiss, his dim opponent

Posted on 11/07/2010 by SnoopyTheGoon

Sometimes I enjoy writing about assaJews, the valiant Jooish anti-Zionists, I have to say. No matter how many dumb things our own politicos say and do, assaJews will always leave them standing in the race for ultimate dumb act. I know that this is a lame kind of consolation, but it’s always good for the morale of the troops, so here comes Philip Weiss, tireless anti-Zionist dullard, to make your day.

If you aren’t aware of the (really unimportant) Cambridge debate that was lost by the incomparable Lauren Booth and her companions, you will have to browse this post to get up to speed. You will notice there a reference to a post by Mr Weiss:

Cambridge debate on Israel is undermined by wily neocon (is that redundant?)

Apparently, tireless Mr Weiss didn’t want to stop there and continued to sort the sinister neocon out. His next article on the subject is here:

More about trickster/debater/Canadian Gabriel Latner, 19

A bag of free laughs, I promise. Apparently, Gabriel decided (what for, I cannot grok) to start a dialog with Weiss and sent him some information about himself and, in addition, the transcript of his speech at the debate. I recommend that you read the speech, attached to the post linked above, but this is a separate task. Let’s go for the fun part now. Weiss quotes Gabriel:

“I am not a neocon. I have absolutely no patience for any ideology that promotes the use of military force in any situation where the preservation of human life does not demand it.”

Hmm… OK, this is something one can take at face value or disbelieve, it depends on one’s tendency. What does Philip Weiss say about this statement?

I don’t know what that means.

Yeah, that was complicated for Mr Weiss. Long words and stuff…  Somebody better draw him a picture, preferably with colored pencils?

But Mr Weiss doesn’t stop at this point, he delves deep into the “neocon’s” sinister link to Israel (Gabriel has been there twice, so thats’ where he must have caught the ziohitleroneocon bug) putting Gabriel to a serious questioning. Well, since the answers Gabriel provided don’t hardly draw a picture of a fully formed red-toothed Zio-bot, Weiss just doesn’t know what to do about the situation and simply stops there, without giving us the benefit of his analysis. Oops… the great hunt for a Zionist beast turned into a flop… too bad.

But before you go to read the speech mentioned above, I would like to show you the level of Mondoweiss’ captive audience. Since any “dissenters” are swiftly ejected from his blog, Mr Weiss remains alone with the kind of commentators that gravitate to him naturally. Well, yeah, the brain-challenged good-for-nothing dumbos that mostly echo his own level of knowledge and intelligence. I shall start with this:

Draconian bill and a Zionist “barrier” – about a perfectly legal fence on the border. When any other country does it, it’s most probably OK with this DIKERSON3870 fellow…

Apparently Weiss encourages wits on his comment board. Pity he gets only 50% ones…

Walid here is another expert in the area of “walls” and “barriers”. In other words, you see here a propagandist that has choked on his own propaganda. Since the “wall” he so assuredly and professionally discusses is in fact a fence (only 10% of it is actually an 8 m tall wall), he could hardly have noticed that puny security fence that separates Lebanon and Israel, in existence for too many years to remember.

And here comes another expert. Where does he draw his knowledge about high windows like IMF, I shudder to think… it ghettoizes my mind.

I don’t know how the issue of the Canuck debater was derailed to get to the subject of same sex marriage, but here we are. That one (his moniker is Piotr, apologies for not displaying the whole text) is something else. Read the above copy, it’s unforgettable. It will learn you, for sure…

The last but not the least. Iranian National Health Service, according to RoHa… take a deep breath. Is it like a voluntary organization or more in lines of Revolutionary Guards? And what kind of change operation did they put RoHa through? Something along the general lines of this? Or, rather, through a brain surgery?

Enough for today. I already feel an urge to place a comment on Mondoweiss… then it will all end in tears…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Posted in Israel | 2 Comments

A new worldview

Posted on 11/06/2010 by Meryl Yourish

Well, the Lasik went well, but boy, it takes some getting used to. My near vision is gone. Kaput. Finished. I was pretty darned nearsighted, so I could basically count the numbers of hairs on my arm if I wanted to (and ew, I just got that concept and, ew). It was actually pretty good for untangling jewelry chains and things like that. Fine work was easy. Yesterday, I couldn’t so much as see the channel numbers on the remote, and I was thinking this was the biggest mistake of my life, even though I could see the time on the DVD player from across the room, which I couldn’t the day before.

This morning, my friends gave me an old pair of reading glasses that’s less powerful than they can use anymore, and my whole world changed. I can use the computer again. I can see the keyboard. And I’m no longer worried that I’m partly blind.

Of course, I also want everything to be healed and done and ready to go. What? I need more than 29 hours to heal? You’re kidding.

This morning’s conversation with [very hot] post-op doctor:

“I’m going to remove the bandages from your eyes now.”
“WHAT? THERE ARE BANDAGES IN MY EYES?”

Yes, indeed. There were bandages in my eyes, and I didn’t even know it.

My old glasses are utterly useless now. I’ll be donating them all to the Lions’ Club. And I get to go and buy a new pair of way-cool sunglasses. They gave me a pair for now, but I know what I’m looking for. Actually, I want several pairs, and most especially, I want that pair that Linda Hamilton wore in T2. I’ve wanted that pair for years. Time to go look up what they were.

I’m here in NJ until Monday. Oh, I didn’t tell you. My doc is in NJ. He’s really good, and this way, I can rely on my family to do things like take me to the surgery early in the morning and make sure I get back home safely hours later. (They gave me Valium to calm me down for the surgery. It was necessary. I was nervous.)

The most awesome thing isn’t that I can see the time on the TV across the room. It’s the utter clarity of my vision as I look at the autumn leaves on the trees. It’s the ability to see almost everything around me. I may not be able to count the hairs on my arm, but I can count the leaves in the trees now, and that’s a trade I’m happy I made.

I can see. I can read half-inch type from eight feet away. Clearly. This is amazing. Like Scott said, it’s a man-made miracle.

Posted in Life | 8 Comments