Sunday, October 13, 2013
Agustin Blazquez: How To Recognize A Dictator
October 10, 2013 by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
Do you know how to recognize a dictator?
Dictators are extremely protective and secretive of their past and associations. They are narcissists, they are deceptive, and they are pathological liars. They blame others for their failures.
They promise change and a better future with greater benefits to the needy, thereby creating a dependent class.
At the same time, dictators create a ruling elite with salaries and privileges denied to the rest of the population—buying their unconditional loyalty while putting them under constant surveillance, because dictators cannot trust anyone. They are unforgiving, vindictive and vengeful, punishing anyone who gets in their way. No one is safe.
Dictators use character assassination, and when completely in control, with absolute power, they do not hesitate to repress and oppress, using imprisonment, “reeducation” and murder. Their only moral code is self-aggrandizement.
Dictators change the education system into indoctrination machinery, in order to create obedient citizen-robots who adapt to live under a quasi-military discipline where they cannot complain and must accept all of the dictator’s demands: low salaries, meager diet, poor housing and deficient “free” health care. The new dependent class is “trained” to support him—the provider.
A dictator thinks of his population as a tool to maximize his power.
Dictatorships can happen in any country in the world. All it takes is someone for whom power is a narcotic to get a foothold in circumstances ripe for accepting a new leader. No country is immune. People fall for dictators out of ignorance.
Not far from America’s shore is the island of Cuba. In spite of many warnings from War World II European immigrants who used their experience to easily identify that the new ruler was taking his country in a far left direction, Cubans were convinced: “It can’t happen here.” But it did.
His name was Fidel Castro. He promised changes, and he certainly delivered them. He ruined that prosperous island which, in 1958, ranked 29 among world economies. His regime has lasted for 54 years and counting.
Agustin Blazquez has produced and directed 10 independent documentaries. The last one, titled CONNECTING THE DOTS (2012), is an expose of the Obama administration. See preview at: youtube.com/jaums / Available at: CubaCollectibles.com.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
The DiploMad 2.0: Progressivism, Chaos, Tyranny, and the Community O...
The DiploMad 2.0: Progressivism, Chaos, Tyranny, and the Community O...: In sum, what do we see? We see the community organizer tactic of using lies, chaos, and the uncertainty that flows as tools of blackmail and extortion. The progressives have moved into almost every aspect of our lives, and when they encounter resistance to further encroachment, they threaten us by shutting down the other services on which they have made us dependent. It's blackmail, pure and simple. We have the extraordinary spectacle of an American President predicting economic disaster and warning Wall Street of tough times to come if he does not get his way. We have a President pushing the stock market to crash, and dissuading businesses from investing and creating jobs, all over a dispute about his seriously flawed health care policy. He, again, is the Chicago community organizer threatening the local landlord or McDonald's franchise with instability, violence, and disruption if he does not get what he wants. Imagine what he can do to you, if he controls your health care.
Chaos in the service of tyranny. The only way to defeat this is to stop the encroachment of government on our lives and begin a serious campaign of rollback.
Chaos in the service of tyranny. The only way to defeat this is to stop the encroachment of government on our lives and begin a serious campaign of rollback.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
Eliyho Matz: Sometimes a Knish is Just a Knish...
HUMAN EVOLUTION, LANGUAGE AND
KNISHES (SEX)
BY: ELIYHO MATZ
Knish Me, I’m Jewish!
[As
Taken From the Internet]
The
documentary, If Knishes Can Talk, by Heather Quinlan, has just débuted
at various places around New York City, as well as around the country. In her film, Quinlan wanders throughout
New York City to explore the English accents and dialects of its residents, and
through her exploration of the boroughs she finds a diversity that brings the
audience to what Marshall McLuhan was saying all along, that “the medium is the
message.” And what exactly this
message is I will try to explain. In her documentary, Quinlan’s subjects, a variety of diverse
and engaging New Yorkers, serve to represent the unique way in which the New
York region speaks, talks, and expresses itself in New York English. The documentary is funny and
educational. The filmmaker has
done an interesting job filming and exploring New Yorkers in their use of a
common lingo, English.
I
personally like accents. Anybody
who speaks to me immediately recognizes that I am not from New York City. I was born in Israel, near Tel Aviv,
and American English is my third foreign language. In the early morning I take a Gypsy taxi to the subway
station. The driver, Pedro, is
from Argentina and speaks to me in a special dialect of English. It is exciting to see how he manages,
with his unique American English, to navigate the streets of metropolitan New
York. The person who sells me my NY
Times every morning is from Pakistan.
He stands on the corner near the subway entrance, clad in Pakistani
dress, and welcomes me every morning.
His English is completely incomprehensible to me, but he has been there
for a number of years and manages to sell the New York newspapers to a variety
of customers.
The
subway conductor, who is from Guyana or India, makes announcements in “funny”
English. Thus the NY passengers
look at each other wondering, trying to figure out what is he actually
saying? But it does not matter;
the “E” train is already moving quickly to Manhattan.
Upon
arriving in Manhattan, my first stop is the neighborhood Puerto Rican
restaurant, a long-time establishment, well kept, that offers authentic Puerto
Rican food. The workers fall into
two groups: native Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans. I have managed for years to have a wonderful breakfast there
– how I order my breakfast I will explain later.
The
superintendent of the building adjacent to our office, whom I have known for
fourteen years, was born in Puerto Rico. Now in his mid-sixties, he came to New York about 45 years
ago, and he speaks a dialect of American English that after fourteen years of
“conversations” with him I still cannot figure out what he says.
A
homeless man whom I used to buy breakfast for once in awhile, who I think was a
Jewish New Yorker, once, on a cold winter day, told me that his blood “does not
‘circumcise’ in his body.”
Most
New Yorkers speak with some sort of unique accent, and in contrast even “pure” born-and-bred
Americans sound a bit out of place in the City. It has always been my interest to try to explain the phenomenon
of language. I regularly ask
people who enter our stationery store, “What is the value of knowing a foreign
language?” Most immediately
answer: communication, exploring cultures, help in traveling, etc. I prefer my own interpretation, and I
most often explain with the story I once read that originated in England, and
goes as follows:
A
mouse observes a slice of cheese in the corner and wants to grab
it,
but it hears “meow” and says to himself, “It’s too dangerous, I’ll wait.” On the second day he observes a large
chunk of cheese. Again he wants to
grab it, but once more he hears “meow” and says to himself, “I’ll wait.” On the third day he observes a very
large chunk of cheese, but this time he hears the sound of a barking dog. It is well known that cats and dogs do not
get along, so he reasons that it safe for him to go and grab the cheese. But as soon as he gets close to the
cheese, the cat pounces on him and eats him up.
When the cat
finishes eating the mouse, she turns to her little kittens
and says, “See, it’s
good to know a second language!”
Most people laugh when they hear the punch line. Then I ask people what did the cat
do? Most are confused, and then I
explain that the cat was using language as a trick. For, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein explained many years
ago, in reality, not well known to most people, is the fact that language is “a
game of words.” Of course,
scientists up to now have not figured out how our brain processes thoughts and
how thoughts are related to speech or writing. This fact notwithstanding, language can be understood as
some sort of a trick that we use to explain, speak, explore, make love, make
war, etc.
I
used the cat and the mouse story at the Puerto Rican restaurant many years ago,
but the workers failed to understand it at first. It was only after I had the story translated into Spanish
that they caught on, and they all laughed! Consequently, every morning when I arrive at the restaurant,
I open up the door and say, “Meow;” my breakfast is then prepared, amidst the
“meows” of the workers who call me el
gato!
It is well known to most
anthropologists that human evolution is a complex subject to tackle. We definitely have developed: we speak,
write, walk, study -- and multiply, that is, we have sex. How we have developed as humans is
still a mystery. How and why we
speak, act and function is not clear.
It is by now general knowledge that we evolved as human beings, and like
other species we have the urge to survive. It is in our genes.
Women, who are half of the story of human evolution, have developed their
own survival technique: approximately every thirty days they menstruate. The period, which is unique in human
evolution, means that the woman loses protein and iron in large
quantities. The iron and protein
must be replaced, thus leading to the “Hunter-Gatherer” theory. The man uses a bow and arrow to hunt,
brings the meat, and as a result of his action he receives sex, or love, or
both. The invention and use of
language are still a mystery. Is
it possible to think or calculate that the rise of language correlated in one
way or another with the basic needs of women during their period? Let’s say that the woman instructs
Schmuel the hunter in a low-pitch voice: Schmuel, go hunting and get me some
meat, otherwise I am starving and dying.
The human relationship between woman and man has a long history of deep
misunderstanding, in which language plays a large part. What is the modern hunter-gatherer
symbol today? It is Cupid with a
bow and arrow on St. Valentine’s Day, a symbol that we all cherish – a new
version of an old story. And then
we arrive at romance stories, but we will start with a New York story.
New
York Jews became prominent in the City only in the last 100 years, between 1900
and 2000. One of their foremost
writers, Henry Roth, in his renowned book Call It Sleep, explores the
Jewish life of the immigrants.
Roth’s work is probably one of the most explicitly portrayed American
Jewish novels to bring us a clear depiction of one’s transition from an
immigrant Jew to a citizen Jew, and the growing up of an American Jewish child
in New York City. Furthermore,
Roth brings us this fantastic dialogue that deals with “knishes” and is written
in the New York English/Yiddish vernacular:
-- Knish?
“Between de legs. Who puts id in is de poppa. De poppa’s god de
petzel. Yaw de poppa.” She giggled stealthily and took his
hand.
He
could feel her guiding it under her dress, then through a pocket-
like
flap. Her skin under his
palm. Revolted, he drew back.
“Yuh must! She insisted, tugging
his hand. “Yuh ast me!”
“No!”
“Put yuh han’ in my knish,” she
coaxed. “Jus’ once.”
“No!’
“I’ll hol’ yuh petzel.” She reached down.
Roth’s novel itself is saturated with a Yiddish-English
mix. In any case, as is clearly
stated here, the word knish is
Jewish-Yiddish slang for the word vagina. I’m not sure that the maker of the
documentary knew this fact, and it is ironical that she based her title on this
word without understanding its deeper implication.
If we believe that there is, or
perhaps must be, some sort of relationship between language and the female vagina,
then it would be instructive to explore some other literary sources. For example, James Joyce, in his famous
book Ulysses, presents his character Molly Bloom with a monologue that
explores the vagina. In Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera, the author explores the
narrative of the protagonist and his love of a certain woman that stretched
almost seventy years until he finally touches her vagina. In Miriam at Thirty-four, Alan
Lelchuk explores the sex life of his Jewish American heroine, about whom the late
professor Gershon Shaked (my Israeli Literature professor at Hebrew University
in Jerusalem) commented that her ultimate sexual goal was a better orgasm. Further exploration in American Jewish
writing is the famous book, played out on stage, The Vagina Dialogues by
Eve Ensler. Tennessee Williams, in
A Streetcar Named Desire, the play in which Marlon Brando became famous
for his role as the character Stanley Kowalsky, mentions that “Stanley carries
his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from a butcher’s” for Stella, thus
the ensuing dialogue:
STANLEY: Catch!
STELLA: What?
STANLEY: Meat!
Thus is suggested the evolving relationship between the
hunter and the receiver via the language of the kill. Is it possible that Quinlan’s film can change its name to If
Bagels Can Talk, or If Blintzes Can Talk, or If Matza Balls Can Talk, thus
avoiding the use of the word knish --
unless the author is definitely sure that there must be some connection between
the knish and language.
It
is sort of strangely illuminating that a Talmudic rabbi is quoted in the Talmud
as saying: Kol b’isha erva. This ruling basically meant that Jewish
men should avoid listening to the voice, sound, or speech of a woman, for, to
translate, this Talmudic ruling says “the voice of a woman is in the vagina,” a
warning meaning that it might lead to sex. It is sad that this ancient Talmudic ruling is creating
confusion in the Israeli military even today, as well as in the general
society. For when a female singer
appears before a military audience, religious soldiers leave the room.
Friday, October 04, 2013
The DiploMad 2.0: A Few Friday Thoughts
The DiploMad 2.0: A Few Friday Thoughts: It's been an eventful week for the media: A government shutdown; a glitch-infested roll out of the disastrous Obamacare; and, of course,...
Execution on DC Streets by Peter Van Buren
We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren
Outside America’s non-working Capitol Building yesterday, cops killed an unarmed woman with a baby in her car after the car had crashed and was stationery. When the cops had her stopped the first time, she did not fire any shots or give any indication she had a weapon.Not that anyone noticed, but cops in the DC area killed another unarmed citizen on Tuesday.
Typical rules of engagement for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan require someone to brandish a weapon before he can be blasted away. Not always followed, but cops in America do not even have the paper restriction. I’ve written elsewhere about making life-and-death decisions in ambiguous wartime situations.
We all know that cops have a dangerous job; they know that too. I know they are scared, dealing with unclear, threatening situations.
But none of that grants them the right to conduct executions on our streets.
- See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/#sthash.up0J3mUp.dpuf
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Wisconsin TA Rejects Diversity Training Requirement
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/14698/
"I regret that this leaves us in an awkward situation. After having been accused of virulent racism and, now, assured that I will next learn how to parse the taxonomy of “Genderqueers”, I am afraid that I will disappoint those who expect me to attend any further diversity sessions. When a Virginia-based research firm came to campus a couple of years ago to present findings from their study of campus diversity, then-Diversity Officer Damon Williams sent a gaggle of shouting, sign-waving undergraduates to the meeting, disrupting the proceedings so badly that the meeting was cancelled. In a final break with such so-called “diversity”, I will not be storming your office or shouting into a megaphone outside your window. Instead, I respectfully inform you hereby that I am disinclined to join in any more mandatory radicalism. I have, thank God, many more important things to do. I also request that diversity training be made optional for all TAs, effective immediately. In my humble opinion, neither the Department nor the university has any right to subject anyone to such intellectual tyranny."
(ht Althouse)
Saturday, September 28, 2013
The DiploMad 2.0: The "Collapse" of Obamacare? Don't Bet On It
The DiploMad 2.0: The "Collapse" of Obamacare? Don't Bet On It: I was reading "Legal Insurrection " (best blog around) and saw this interesting piece which referenced an also interesting piece...
Friday, September 27, 2013
Al Gore's Brookings Hate Speech Made Me Quit Email List
Dear Brookings Communication Department:
Does Brookings want to arrest "political terrorists" now? Call in drone strikes? This rhetoric is simply beyond the pale of civilized discourse, a slippery slope of political dehumanization of the opposition.
Shame on Brookings for passing on Al Gore's uncivil remarks, without condemnation.
As you know, Vice President Al Gore and the Republic survived a shutdown in the Clinton administration very nicely. There were shutdowns in the Carter administration, as well. It is called the congressional power of the purse.
After reading this email, I no longer have confidence in Brookings' rationality, nor its commitment to civil political discourse.
Therefore, I do not wish to receive any further materials by email from Brookings.
So, please remove me from all your email distribution lists, asap.
And please do tell Al Gore he's tarnished your reputation with at least one recipient.
If you ever condemn him, I'll subscribe again.
Sincerely,
Laurence A. Jarvik, Ph.D.
On Sep 27, 2013, at 3:51 PM, Brookings Center for Effective Public Management wrote:
If you joined us online this morning for former Vice President Al Gore's address at the launch of the new Center for Effective Public Management, you were among the first to hear his remarks about the potential U.S. government shutdown.
"Political Terrorism" was the term Gore used to refer to threats to shut down the government and default on the U.S. debt in his keynote address at this morning's event.
John Hudak highlighted Gore's words on the Center's new blog, FixGov, writing that they emphasized the importance of the Center's work to understand political dysfunction and create real reform.
You can watch video of Gore's remarks and read John's blog post on FixGov:"Why does partisanship have anything to do with such a despicable and dishonorable threat to the integrity of the United States of America?" Gore asked these questions and more, which are fully outlined in a summary of the event's major moments:
Forthcoming research from the new Center will address these vital issues as it works to identify and solve political and governance challenges in 21st century America. As Gore remarked, the Center's work will be at "the heart of what we need to do to make the United States of America what our Founders intended and what our people deserve."
Tell NY City Council to Save New York Public Library!
Dear Library Supporter,
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD AT A CITY COUNCIL HEARING ON THE FUTURE OF OUR LIBRARIES!
On Monday, Sept 30, 2013, at 1:00 p.m. at 250 Broadway, 16th Floor Committee Room, a very important Public Hearing about Capital Construction Needs and Potential Disposal of Libraries in NYC will take place. The Agenda can be found online here:
The City Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations is holding the hearing.
It’s very important that as many people testify as possible against the Central Library Plan and the sale of public libraries, and on behalf of the needs of library users all over the city. We need to take advantage of this unique opportunity to testify. If you don’t want to testify you can still show your support just by being there. There is strength in numbers!
Please arrive a half hour early (12:30 pm) to go through security, and bring valid photo ID with you.
For more information, see "The Truth About the Central Library Plan": www.savenypl.org/the-truth-about-the-central-library-plan/
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
232 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003
info@savenypl.org
www.savenypl.org
facebook: Save NYPL
on twitter @saveNYPL
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz, Still Speaking...
Watch live: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/5807276
YouTube channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SenTedCruz
Senate office, here: http://www.cruz.senate.gov
Official Senate bio:
YouTube channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SenTedCruz
Senate office, here: http://www.cruz.senate.gov
Official Senate bio:
About Ted
In 2012, Ted Cruz was elected as the 34th U.S. Senator from Texas. A passionate fighter for limited government, economic growth, and the Constitution, Ted won a decisive victory in both the Republican primary and the general election, despite having never before been elected to office.Propelled by tens of thousands of grassroots activists across Texas, Ted’s election has been described by the Washington Post as “the biggest upset of 2012 . . . a true grassroots victory against very long odds.”National Review has described Ted as “a great Reaganite hope,” columnist George Will has described him as “as good as it gets,” and the National Federation of Independent Business characterized his election as “critical to the small-business owners in [Texas, and], also to protecting free enterprise across America,”Ted’s calling to public service is inspired largely by his first-hand observation of the pursuit of freedom and opportunity in America. Ted’s mother was born in Delaware to an Irish and Italian working-class family; she became the first in her family to go to college, graduated from Rice University with a degree in mathematics, and became a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950s.Ted’s father was born in Cuba, fought in the revolution, and was imprisoned and tortured. He fled to Texas in 1957, penniless and not speaking a word of English. He washed dishes for 50 cents an hour, paid his way through the University of Texas, and started a small business in the oil and gas industry. Today, Ted’s father is a pastor in Dallas.In the Senate, Ted serves on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Committee on Armed Services; the Committee on the Judiciary; the Special Committee on Aging; and the Committee on Rules and Administration.Before being elected, Ted received national acclaim as the Solicitor General of Texas, the State's chief lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court. Serving under Attorney General Greg Abbott, Ted was the nation’s youngest Solicitor General, the longest serving Solicitor General in Texas, and the first Hispanic Solicitor General of Texas.In private practice in Houston, Ted spent five years as a partner at one of the nation’s largest law firms, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national Appellate Litigation practice.Ted has authored more than 80 U.S. Supreme Court briefs and argued 43 oral arguments, including nine before the U.S. Supreme Court. During Ted’s service as Solicitor General, Texas achieved an unprecedented series of landmark national victories, including successfully defending:
- U.S. sovereignty against the UN and the World Court in Medellin v. Texas;
- The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms;
- The constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument;
- The constitutionality of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance;
- The constitutionality of the Texas Sexually Violent Predator Civil Commitment law; and
- The Texas congressional redistricting plan.
The National Law Journal has called Ted “a key voice” to whom “the [U.S. Supreme Court] Justices listen.” Ted has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America, by the National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America, and by Texas Lawyer as one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century.From 2004-09, he taught U.S. Supreme Court Litigation as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law.Prior to becoming Solicitor General, he served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign.Ted graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for the Chief Justice of the United States.Ted and his wife Heidi live in his hometown of Houston, Texas, with their two young daughters Caroline and Catherine.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The DiploMad 2.0: Religion of Peace Recap
The DiploMad 2.0: Religion of Peace Recap: The Religion of Peace has been busy helping prove that Islamophobia does not exist. Per the experts at the American Psychiatric Association...
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Israel's Yom Kippur War--40 Years after 1973: A Memoir by Eliyho Matz
REFLECTIONS ON THE YOM KIPPUR WAR,
1973,
FORTY YEARS LATER, YOM KIPPUR 2013
By: Eliyho Matz
“Ithaka
gave you the beautiful voyage;
Without
her you would never have started your journey.
She has nothing else to give you.”
From
“Ithaka” by CP Kavafy
The Yom Kippur War
started on October 6, 1973, and its repercussions continue until today, Yom
Kippur 2013. For me personally,
the war started in 1965 when I ran away as fast as I could from my high school
in Rishon LeZion. I fled to a kibbutz
in the Upper Galilee called Ayelet HaShachar to recover from a very bad high
school experience. Rishon LeZion
was an old Israeli village, today a large city, which did not particularly
shine its light on me. The studies
at my high school, the Gymnasia, were complicated for me; my ability to focus
was limited, the teachers were obnoxious, and I had very few good friends. In
short, as we used to explain it many years ago, the dancer always complained
that the floor he danced on was uneven, and therefore he could not dance
skillfully. I can say that I was bored
and lazy in my studies, I can say that it was difficult for me, but it was very
clear to me just then, and I was only sixteen, that the teachers were
incompetent and the principal and his vice-principal were out of touch and
ineffective, and so I picked myself up and ran away to the Upper Galilee. How I arrived at this decision to go to
the kibbutz I cannot explain exactly.
It is possible that in my subconscious the Israeli pioneering propaganda
and the achievements of the kibbutz movement, and possibly other reasons that I
do not know, swept me up and brought me to the office of the kibbutz movement in
Tel Aviv, and there one of its members picked me up and drove me to
Ayelet HaShachar.
Upon my arrival at
Ayelet HaSchachar, I started working.
My immediate supervisor, a lazy kibbutznik, a short and tough individual
by the name of Dan Ziv (nicknamed Zift),
explained and showed me how to crawl beneath chicken coops filled with manure,
and how to remove that manure and load it into a wagon, which took it to a
compost pile. The chicken coops
were used to raise chickens for a few months, after which they were sold and
taken to slaughter. The old manure
had to be removed before each new crop of new chicks arrived. I adapted quickly to the work, but a
serious manure-remover I was not.
Dan Ziv left me at the coops with another Israeli kid and a toothless
Australian tourist/worker, whom the kibbutz promised to provide with a new set
of false teeth upon completion of his work. I learned from him a very unique dialect of toothless
Australian English! We worked
together in the coops for about three or four months, but the smell of the
manure is still with me today.
While working with the manure and making sure to shower each day after
work, I began to get to know the kibbutz members. I started to hear opinions and all sorts of gossip about the
place and its people. I spent most
of my free time reading history and literature books, so in one way or another I
began to prepare myself on my own for the high school baccalaureate exam in
those subjects. Later on, I had an
opportunity to work in other areas of the kibbutz, including the dining hall,
apple orchards and bee hives, and I even became a guard for a short time. Eli Ziv, Dan’s brother and a graduate
of Sayeret Matkal, one of Israel’s
most courageous military units, taught me how to drive a jeep and explained to
me the basic uses of the submachine gun, the Uzzi. In the course of my stay, I met many of the kibbutz
members. I tried to make friends
with them, but in as close a society as the kibbutz was, doing so was difficult
to achieve. It is true that here
and there I made some friends, but I could not really develop a deep
relationship with anybody, including with the kibbutz women. And if there was one woman whom I
liked, she did not give a damn about me – her name was Rina. The upside was that my lack of social
progress gave me a greater opportunity to read, study, and ride a bicycle outside
the area of the kibbutz. I had an
opportunity to wander in Tel Hazor, which is an ancient archeological site
adjacent to the kibbutz. I had an
opportunity to ponder various issues of life, as well as to study history and
read literature. The sad thing
about reading these subjects on my own was that I really did not understand
much about them. My integration
into the kibbutz was difficult; the kibbutzniks were selfish, and the moment
eventually came when I turned eighteen and had to join the Israeli
military. And since I wanted to be
a big gibor, or hero, I decided to
join the Tzanchanim, the Israeli
paratrooper brigade. Apropos, Dan
Ziv must be today seventy-five or eighty; Colonel Dan Ziv was already a
decorated hero of the Paratroopers in the battle of Mitle Pass in 1956, and in
the 1973 Yom Kippur War he conducted an atrocious battle, as well as an idiotic
one, in the Sarafaum on the west side of the Suez Canal. With Dan Ziv, I did not have that much
opportunity to express ideas; he did not say much, and besides he was not
particularly well educated.
Whenever I met him, he used to say that we have to be strong – this was
a very interesting idea.
Company B, Platoon
D, Regiment 202, February 1967, and here I was in the Paratroopers. The company commander was Nachik Alon,
the son of a famous Israeli historian.
Ever since my youth, I would say my early youth, I wanted to understand
and comprehend history, philosophy, and literature. I thought that by joining the Tzanchanim I would have the opportunity to do so. Of course, I did not have any
historical or philosophical tools to understand those issues. Suddenly, from a normal human being, I
was transformed into a paratrooper.
The process was not easy.
My platoon commander was Eli Strikovski, tough and rough, not well
educated, and not too smart. He
tried to transform me, Eliyho, into a courageous soldier, but apparently failed
to do so. He apparently did not
see in me what he expected from a “real” soldier. I participated in the platoon’s military activities, I did
what the other soldiers did, but a serious soldier I was not; nor could I be
one even if I really wanted. I
could never take “soldiering” as a serious business. And it did not matter who taught that business. Strikovski must have sensed this, and
one day when I asked him for a special leave for my cousin’s bar mitzvah, he
refused, and he also, apropos, mentioned that he could not grant leave to a
lousy soldier that he considered me to be. My attempt to request this special pass from my company
commander also failed. It took me
awhile to respond to my platoon commander, but approximately a year later the
opportunity presented itself (to be described below). Later that year Strikovski was severely wounded in an
ambush, but he continued his military service. During the Yom Kippur War, by which time he had changed his
name to Sorek, he won a medal for heroism at the Suez Canal, which was the same
region where I was located during that time.
To anyone familiar
with modern Israeli history, it is well known that in June 1967, Israel went to
war against its neighbors because they all threatened her existence. This war was named the Six Day
War. The Israeli Paratroopers were
in full intensive exercises before the war; I know this because my unit was
also involved in this training. Mentally,
it was a very difficult time because we were surrounded by many enemies. My unit of new paratroopers had just
been recruited in February 1967, so we did not have that much time to go
through all the paratrooper exercises.
We did a quick and short parachuting exercise. Our parachute instructor was Amiram Ziet, a cool person and
a very social one, at least one light in the darkness. The war process was coming to a
crescendo, and Eliyho got on Strikovski’s nerves, and for one reason or another
he inflicted a punishment on a small group of us: “You are not going to war,
you are staying on the base, I do not take lousy soldiers to war.” Immediately I became depressed even
though I was not exactly the hero that the “General” (actually “Lieutenant”) Strikovski
was. For in any case, a soldier is
tested by his ability to shoot, which I could do as well as anybody else; I
also learned how to run, jump and parachute along with the others. It is true that I had never
participated in any battles, but don’t soldiers need to participate in order to
be tested? But Strikovski decided
that my small group was not going anywhere, that we were going to stay on the
base. The evening before the war
broke out, we were in a gloomy mood, wandering aimlessly and desperately. Go and tell the wide world that we were
left behind at the base because the lieutenant considered us to be lousy
soldiers – not a pleasant thought.
But then, in the midst of our gloominess, no sooner had our unit left, a
young officer whom we had never met arrived, gathered us politely around him,
and explained to us that the reason we had been left on base was because we
were needed to participate in a secret mission, for which we had to leave immediately,
with all our equipment. We were
quickly driven to some location in the northern Negev (Israel’s southern
region). To our surprise, there
were some helicopters waiting on the spot, already engaged in an
exercise/mission, in which a special force was prepared to enter swiftly into
Egyptian territory to do something that was not clear to us. Our group was supposed to carry out the
simple task of blocking the road that led to the location of the attack. A very interesting mission, one
requiring much courage, and in retrospect one from which probably none of us
would have returned. Suddenly, I
was back to being a paratrooper.
We stayed at that place that evening, and in the middle of the night the
commander of the mission announced that because of the swift advance of the
Israeli forces into the Sinai, there was no more need for our mission. We immediately were taken away by
military trucks to an air force base, and in the early hours of midday we were
regrouped with a paratrooper force near the tarmac for a different mission, to
jump into battle at Sharm el Sheik at the southern tip of the Sinai
Desert. So our small group became
part of a larger force led by Sergeant Shlomo Stein, a moshavnik from Kfar
Achim. We, those lousy soldiers
whom Strikovski left at the training camp, were suddenly joining forces to
parachute into battle, and as a result, if we were to survive this battle, we
would receive “Red Wings” to indicate our successful jump into enemy territory
in wartime. We walked to the air planes,
which were a type not familiar to us, a Boeing military plane used during WWII
for cargo and parachuting. We were
around 250-people strong. The
group consisted of representatives from different paratrooper groups. Some were older, and we were the
youngest ones. I don’t remember
recognizing anyone outside our small group. It was a very tense flight, and it took awhile. We were protected by some air force
planes in the air, and finally we arrived at Sharm el Sheik. As the moment came close to jump from
the airplanes, the commander suddenly announced that we were not going to do
so. The reason was not yet
clear. But as soon as we landed on
the dusty tarmac of Sharm el Sheik, what had happened did become clear. A small naval force of Israeli commandos
had arrived an hour before we did and found that the entire Egyptian brigade
had fled and disappeared. All that
was left were rows and rows of canned beans and tomato sauce! The naval commando force we met there
included among its group a fellow from Kibbutz Ayalet HaShachar named Oded
Landsman, and another kibbutznik from Kibbutz Ma’agan by the name of Ami
Ayalon. Ayalon later became the
Chief of Israeli Naval Operations as well as the Chief of Israeli Interior
Security, and a member of the Israeli Knesset. He also won a medal for bravery in a military operation in
which he was severely wounded. I
had met Ami two years earlier while I was in National Service at his
kibbutz. He suggested to me not to
swim or dive here in the Red Sea because the sea was filled with too many
sharks. I accepted his
advice. Since we had nothing to do
at the place, we were subsequently sent back to Strikovski and our base in the
north.
During the Six Day
War, our military unit 202 fought mostly in the Gaza region. We suffered casualties, with some dead
and a larger number wounded; I do not have the actual numbers. Immediately after the unit returned to
base from Gaza, we were redeployed to Gaza City. There, some of our unit became entangled in activities and
atrocities that until today it is hard to figure out. Eventually, I did not see the unit anymore. Fortunately for me, I guess Strikovski
had enough of me. Imagine how it
would have looked in the history of the Israeli Paratroopers: a small group of
Strikovski’s rejects parachuting into Sharm el Sheik, and Strikovski missing
that military action altogether.
Within a few days, a young officer arrived with a pick-up truck, spoke
to our company commander Nachik Alon, and, without saying much or even
introducing himself, he instructed me to get into the back of the truck. I was taken to the newly conquered West
Bank. The officer’s name was Amnon
Lipkin, later changed to Shachaq, and he was one of the most arrogant and
antipathetic people I have ever met.
He was the commander of a small paratrooper unit called “Duchifat,” nominated to the command
after the previous commander, Ehud Shani, died in battle north of Jerusalem.
Amnon later on in his career became Israeli Chief of Staff. I had no clear military profession at
that time; I had just jumped from airplanes a few times, and in military jargon
I was “nobody.” I joined the
communications department of this new unit on the West Bank. Each one of the soldiers had his own twisted
ideas about life and the military, and our sergeant was Yossi Angel from the
well known Angel Bakeries in Jerusalem.
Today Yossi Angel, aided by his father’s advice and money, has relocated
to New York City where he has opened up a bakery and tried to reinvent the
American muffin! I meet him
occasionally for a quick greeting, and to taste his muffins. Anyway, the unit was in the midst of
intensive training. The original
idea for this Duchifat unit was that
it would be something between a tank unit and a paratrooper unit, but its end was
tragic, and trying to combine these two forces was probably one of the biggest
mistakes that he Israeli military made.
In a later battle which our unit participated in, we had too many
casualties, and within a year the unit was dispersed. I was one of the last ones left to take apart the
communications equipment. After
that, I was sent to a new paratrooper command that had been especially
established to train young paratroopers.
One of the first commanders in this unit was an older paratrooper named
“Tarzan.” He was there for a short
time, and after him came Yaakov Chalabi.
Once, at the end of his service, Chalabi took me with him on a trip to
Bethlehem. It was
Christmastime. This trip to
Bethlehem changed my entire life, not at the time that I was there, but a few
years later (to be clarified below).
In Bethlehem I met a sergeant from the military police by the name of
Yaakov Sharabani, later changed to Sharon. Yaakov was not exactly the healthiest person, and probably
needed some connection to be accepted in the military. One of his best friends was an elderly
famous paratrooper by the name of Yecheskiel Baum. Anyway, this paratrooper unit that was organized to train
young paratroopers had a few changes of commanders, and one day a new commander
arrived, Colonel Amos Yaron. Amos
lived in those years in Rishon LeZion, a very short distance from my parents’
home. I do not know how it
started, but I began driving his military vehicle back-and-forth between the
West Bank and Rishon. Lo and behold,
one day Strikovski arrived in our unit to fulfill a job as an instructor. I had the opportunity to tell Amos
about my past association and experiences with this “gentleman,’ and made sure,
with Amos’ agreement, that when I was called upon to drive him to Tel Aviv he
would be compelled to sit in the back of the truck, rather than on the front
seat near me. I did not speak to
Strikovski, and he did not speak to me.
I served with Amos for about half-a-year, or perhaps a bit more, and I
joined him on a few occasions at some very important military exercises in which
he was a judge. One of these involved
crossing a canal, which replicated the Suez Canal. This exercise took place toward the end of 1969; the
exercise later became a reality in the 1973 war, which I will return to
later. I met at that time a young
officer by the name of Eli Cohen; in 1973 Cohen was the first Israeli
paratrooper to cross the Suez Canal.
He later became a member of the Israeli Knesset. In the final year of my regular military
service, I experienced one of the most exciting things that happened to me
during my service, or maybe even during my entire life. A young driver by the name of Shabtai
Shevili arrived at our base donning big glasses — I guess he could not see well
– and during his first day at the base he turned over in the vehicle that he
was driving. Fortunately he was
not hurt, but he was definitely shaken, as was I. We became friends, and I’ll always owe him a large debt of gratitude,
for he introduced me to a relative of his who resided in Jerusalem by the name
of Abram Jana Soramello. One of
the most interesting Israelis I ever met, Soramello was a joker, a smoker, a
drinker and a storyteller who spoke Hebrew and Arabic.
Finally, my regular
army service came to an end. In
the last few months of my military service I became the driver for another
Israeli “hero,” Asaf Villin, who later changed his name to Chefetz and became a
commander in the Paratroopers and then the commander of the Israeli National
Police. His failure in the
military was due to the fact that he irritated the renowned Raful. Asaf was known among Israeli
paratroopers to be a very courageous soldier. He was a kibbutznik from Kfar Menachem. He met his wife Sarah at our unit; she
was our clerk. One day, Asaf asked
me to join him to go to a place in the West Bank. When we arrived, he pulled some dynamite and other equipment
out of the jeep and tried to blow up an empty building. The problem was, we did not distance
ourselves far enough away from the building to avoid the fallout from the
blast, but luckily we were not hurt.
I met him later at the Mitla Pass in 1971 when I was working in the
Sinai Desert on fortifications, and he was the commander of Unit 890. I felt that he looked at me disdainfully,
perhaps wondering what I was doing there, and I never saw him again. But at the end of my military service
he wrote me a personal letter of recommendation in which he cited me as a
responsible and dedicated soldier.
I still have his letter at home, and I look at it occasionally, and
wonder.
During the final
year of my army service I began preparing myself, mostly in the evenings, for
various exams that would lead me to entrance into a university. Finally I returned to my parents’ home
in Rishon LeZion. I found a few places to work, but I failed in all of them
until eventually I found a job with a famous photographer, Nahum Gutman (not
the painter). With Gutman I worked
for approximately six months as a photo journalist, publishing pictures in most
Israeli newspapers. One day while
working in photography, I met a relative of mine, an engineer who was working
on the fortifications at the Suez Canal, and he hired me for a job there. I walked by foot and traveled by jeep
all over the region of the Canal.
I also worked on the road that led from Tasa to the Suez Canal. During the Yom Kippur War, that road,
called “Akavish” (Spider) became the main road the Israelis used to invade
Egypt. After half-a-year there, I decided that I wanted to begin serious
studies, so I enrolled at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where I
registered for courses in Israeli Literature and the History of Jews. In October 1972, I arrived for the
first time as a student at the Hebrew University and settled in at the G’vat
Ram campus. I arrived with very
little money, only some small savings from the various jobs I had done, not
knowing exactly how I would survive.
On my first day I took a walk around the campus to look around, and
suddenly I saw my old friend Yaakov Sharabani Sharon. He was at that time an assistant to the security chief
at the university, and within a few days he hired me to work for him at the
security department of the university!
Now I had a chance to study and a salary to support me. One day while I was on security duty
standing near the Biology building, a short young American woman wearing
glasses asked me how to get to the National Library. A friendship developed between us, and we are now together for
forty years!
I
did not have a chance to be at the university for two months before I was
called for Reserve duty, which extended from the end of 1972 into the beginning
of 1973. This time I was placed in
a different military unit as a driver for the deputy commander of the unit, and
unfortunately I could not escape my duty.
In the meantime at the university, I was taking complicated courses with
Professor Stern, Professor Shaked, Professor Yosef Dan and others – I was
moving forward. Little by little I
began meeting people at the university and really progressing. What I forgot to talk about and mention
earlier was that my military exercise at the beginning of 1973 in reality was a
general rehearsal for the Yom Kippur War.
In 1969, I had gone out with Amos Yaron to check a possible crossing of
the Suez Canal; in 1973, we did a simulated exercise on a model of the Canal,
but this time we employed a specially made bridge on wheels. Our job was to protect the bridge as it
was rolled into the Suez Canal. The
next time I met that bridge was not as an exercise, but in battle in October
1973. As for myself thinking about
all these military exercises we carried out over the years, I never thought
seriously that we would come to a point where we would actually need to cross
the Suez Canal; it seemed like too much of a fantasy to me – I guess I was
wrong.
Meanwhile,
finally back at the university in the early months of 1973, I continued
studying and working to complete the semester, and Barbara Fichman, my girlfriend,
returned to America. I planned to
travel to America for my first time at the end of August to meet her parents
and discuss plans for our marriage.
By then my exams to end my first year at the university would be
completed. Since I was a typical
Israeli, I arrived in America without any proper clothing -- no jacket and no
tie -- and soon the Fichman family was going to synagogue for Yom Kippur
services. Without the proper
clothing, I did not attend services that morning, but fell asleep, only to be
awakened by Barbara at noontime and told that there was a terrible war waging
in the Middle East, later to be known as the Yom Kippur War. I called up the Israeli embassy in
Washington, DC, and was instructed to go directly to JFK Airport in New York
for a flight back to Israel. I
arrived in Israel within twenty-four hours and travelled immediately to the
Sinai Desert, where I joined my unit stationed in Tasa around the parameters of
the headquarters of General Erik Sharon, the “King of Israel.” This was a place I knew very well from
my work on the fortifications. In
the beginning, there was total chaos there, but little-by-little the Israeli
military managed to rearrange and organize its forces. And since we were very close to the
Sharon headquarters, lo and behold I met all the characters I missed so much:
Dan Ziv and Amnon Shachaq, commanders of paratrooper units, Strikovski, with a
special jeep unit, and Eli Cohen, who was about to become the first Israeli
paratrooper to cross the Suez Canal.
I was the driver of the deputy commander of the unit, Dubi Ravid, and
occasionally I also drove another officer by the name of Amos Schoken. (Years later he became the proprietor
of the newspaper Ha’aretz. Amos S. is a very intelligent and
courageous person. I have read his
family’s newspaper since my youth, and I always appreciated the intellectual
streak it carried. For the first
thirty years of my residence in America, I received the weekly edition of this
newspaper mailed to my home.
However, in the last ten years I have discovered that its level of
intellectualism has eroded.) We
were sitting in Tasa and waiting for an order to move. In the meantime around us the Egyptians
sent some commando forces into our area, and we caught them. Egyptian attack airplanes were
attacking us, and our unit shot one of them down. The most disturbing incident while we were waiting to do
something was the arrival of some young Israeli soldiers, the remnants of some
units that were involved in defending the Suez Canal at the first attack on Yom
Kippur. On the 14th or 15th of October, we began our move
toward the Suez Canal. Our unit
surrounded the famous bridge-on-wheels.
On the second day of our movement, Egyptian airplanes discovered us and
attacked us. By sheer miracle I
was not killed in that attack. We
also heard reports about the chaos that happened at the “Chinese Farm,” where
one of the most terrible battles of this war occurred. About fifty paratroopers were killed
there, and I have no idea how many tank people lost their lives there. While all this was happening, we were
moving closer and closer to the Suez Canal. Eventually, one of the paratrooper forces that entered into
the west side of the Canal, led by Dan Ziv, at the Sarafaum, got into real
trouble there. Many many articles
and stories have come out to relate the details of that battle. The main conclusion was that Dan Ziv as
a commander performed poorly, and it is not that he was not a courageous
person, but that his judgment in battle did not fit the reality of this
complicated event. One of the
victims of this battle, a very courageous Israeli soldier, was Asa Cadmoni. We left the Suez Canal five months
later.
When
I returned to the University, I lacked the desire to study. Classes had started in November, and
now it was the end of March of the following year. My roommate was dead, and I lost all interest in
studying. I decided to travel to
America, and so I did. About my
adventures in America I will write a different story. In the meantime, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 still provides
mountains of speculation, and there remains a total misunderstanding among
Israelis about the causes and conclusions of that war. It is possible that these conversations
about the war will not end, even at the end of days, unless maybe a little bit before
that. I hope we will one day find
some way to figure out the key to all the unanswered questions.
Andrew C. McCarthy: US Support for Syrian Terrorists Illegal
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359106/no-material-support-terrorists-andrew-c-mccarthy
Under the pertinent provision of the act, the prohibitions against military aid to a country are not limited by its government’s history of promoting particular terrorist groups. That is to say, even if it were correct that Hezbollah alone was responsible for the AECA’s application to Syria, this would not narrow transactions prohibited under the statute to those by which the Assad regime could benefit Hezbollah. (As it happens, Hezbollah is far from the only terrorist entity abetted by Syria; the Assad regime’s patron is Iran, the world’s numero uno terrorism promoter; Syria, furthermore, has a history of supporting and providing safe harbor for Hamas — the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian terrorist branch, which happens to be allied with the “rebels” in the Syrian civil war.)In point of fact, AECA prohibitions apply to countries, not regimes that govern countries — i.e., they apply here to Syria, not just Assad. There is good reason for this. If a government with a history of supporting terrorism is on the brink of collapse or overthrow, there is even more risk than usual that any weaponry and other military aid we provide will fall into the hands of terrorists. This is not just abstract logic; we know it from our own very recent experience: Since the regime fell in Qaddafi’s Libya — thanks to Obama’s unauthorized war — weapons distributed to and purloined by jihadists have fueled al-Qaeda’s operations in North Africa and may well have contributed to the Benghazi massacre, in which four American officials were murdered and several others seriously wounded.In any event, once the AECA applies to a country, the provision of military and other aid outlined in the statute is prohibited. The president’s power to waive this prohibition is very limited. It is not good enough for the president to say the aid is in U.S. interests. A waiver is valid only if the aid in question is “essential” to U.S. “national security” interests. The interests of Syrians are irrelevant under the law’s plain terms.It is inconceivable that supplying materiel to Syrians, including equipment that protects people from chemical weapons, could be essential to American national security. Obviously, if American national security were actually at risk, we would be invading Syria with our own forces, not arming the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda.In fact, in the case of Syria, it is more likely true that withholding protective equipment and arms is essential to American national security. There are, after all, reports — from Turkey, Iraq, and Syria — detailing chemical-weapons manufacturing, procurement, and use by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups that are systematically incorporated into the operations of the Syrian opposition. The Obama administration and Republican leaders are in high dudgeon over Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, but they seem to have a frog in their throats when it comes to the “rebels.”
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