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Given the latest event in Istanbul, I thought I’d contribute just a little something in support of the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Dear Mr. Erdogan. Since you were such an advocate for Israel’s struggle against extreme Muslim fundamentalist terrorism, I feel obligated to give you an advice now that you are dealing with some terrorism in your own country. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get into the intricacies of whether the Kurds are to be considered terrorists, freedom fighters, separatists, nationalists, or just Turkish “concerned citizens” who happen to think that bombing busses is a reasonable way to deal with an oppressive government. These are subtleties that I am confident you can figure out on your own.
I suspect that the PKK are slightly upset because you, your government, your border police, your city police forces are doing almost everything they can to deprive them of the lifeline they need: explosives. Face it. They need explosives to make a point, and instead of allowing them free access to standard explosives, you search cargo ships and airplanes, enforce your land border control, raid homes and businesses of suspected activists, and hold them in house arrests without trail or indictment for extended periods of time. It’s clearly unfair to deny the PKK what it so desperately needs.
I suggest you do the following. Unilaterally announce that the PKK is a valid partner for discussions and negotiations. Make them feel wanted. Make them feel as is they are part of the Turkish people. Allow them access to standard explosives, weapons, missiles, even helicopters and airplanes. You know what, go all the way and let them explore some nuclear technology. For peace purposes of course. I am confident that these steps will bring you guys closer. After all, how do you expect the PKK to be your friend, when you keep denying them humanitarian aid in the form of weapons.
I am sure that you won’t regret these trust building steps, which will surely lead to negotiations at the end of which a peace treaty will be signed and executed.
By the way, I can’t help but wonder. How will you react if the PKK would have put together a Humanitarian Aid Flotilla, supported say by Israel, with loads of flour, oil, medicine, and just a few basic freedom fighters little helpers. Any chance you would let the boats dock in the beautiful Istanbul seaport? Help unload the cargo and truck it to the PKK training bases? By the way, I am confident the United Nation organization would love to help you with the logistics.
Mr. Erdogan. This is your chance to be accepted to the family of nations. You might be dead, but who cares? For as long as you’re a member of the nice family of world nations who deplore terrorism, but love terrorists…
The suspense has been building up for months. Even more. Hopes were building up as well. For years. Even here in Israel, the Soccer capital of the Middle East. Speculations were flying around. Who will make the national team, who will be the head coach, the assistant. What teams will the national team have to play in order to pass the pre-games and finally, after so many years, make it to the World Cup. Mondial 2010 in South Africa.
Men around the world (some women too I’m sure) were gathering in small groups, in large groups, at homes and in pubs, with beer or hard liquor, watching game after game. Rooting for their national teams, their favorite players. Cussing and making fun of the others, the enemies.
In Israel it was short lived. After a few press conferences in which the head coach made statements like “we have never been more prepared”, and “this year with the current line up of players, we are on our way to the World Cup for the first time since 1966″, followed by a few games in which Israel lost to countries that can’t even spell “Soccer”, we were out of the competition, the head coach our of a job, and countless Israeli men short of money and big on beer bellies. For Israel, this scenario has been spelling the World Cup for years. Big statements, small games. Big mouths, small results.
Not for me. I expected nothing and that’s precisely what I got. I haven’t watched a single game. I barely read the score on the news a couple of days later. Overhearing the big shots on the train, and their deep analysis of the game, the players, and the “disgraceful errors” made by the coach, the “amazing mistakes” ruled by the referee, I had all the information I needed.
And then, suddenly, June arrived. It was a surprise really. May hardly ended, and there it was, June, and the South African World Cup of 2010 was on its way. Israel wasn’t there. But in our defense I would state that many other countries didn’t make it to the World Cup. (Later I would learn that making it to the World Cup and actually showing up to the games are two different things. See the French team for example. They made their way to the World Cup, but never showed up to the games).
And there I was. Anticipating the whistle. The signal for the games to begin. The World Cup. What an amazing event. Only once every four years. What a wonderful show of human sportsmanship, teamwork, solidarity, strategy and tactics. I felt lucky to be alive, and to be the owner of a large screen LCD TV with full HD capabilities. Really large.
I sat on my American Comfort brown soft leather armchair, put my feet up in the air, took a handful of sunflower seeds, and made sure that the Heineken is within the reach of my hand. I was all set to be excited, to be entertained, to be in the game. And then I remembered. It hit me like a lightning in the middle of the summer. Like Mozart playing in the middle of a baseball game in the heart of Minnesota. In the winter. It’s boring.
I almost fell off the chair. What the hell was I thinking? Twenty millionaires, each ten wearing expensive colorful uniform, with two other wearing ski clothes standing in the goals. Another black and yellow guy standing in the middle of the huge grass court, pointing fingers like a senior manager in some hitech company and whistling all the time, and rain. The millionaires keep running around, chasing a ball, kicking each other particularly in the feet and then immediately denying the kick (which by the way they repeat, slowly, one time after the other almost every time), spitting and sweating, holding each other’s shirts, pants, feet and hair. Sometimes, not very often, one of them actually makes it all the way to the other side, and successfully enters the ball in to the other team’s goal. In which case the yellow guy usually comes close, and says something like “offside” or even simpler, just reaches to his invisible pocket and flashes a yellow or red card, followed by a big fight not only on the courts, but also by some older men wearing suits on both sides of the court.
The players run around and as soon as someone comes close they twist their faces and fall on the grass holding one organ or another. At first you think the game is over for the guy, and that the murderer will be indicted shortly. Then he runs again, slowly, and you see clearly that the other guy had nothing to do with it. Strange.
Ninety minutes later I realized that I wasted another two hours on watching a bunch of sweaty men running around a grass court. The funny thing is, that an hour later there’s another game, and I watch that one too. And another one.
Amazing this Soccer game. And then it hit me again. Soccer develops tolerance for boredom. If you are strong enough to watch the World Cup, you are probably strong enough to sustain almost anything. Long Live the Mondial. And may we live to see and sleep through many more.
Finally. Finally a senior reporter looked straight into the camera (or a cellular phone or whatever) and said what most of the reporters think, but are smart enough to not say: Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine”. Jews should “go home”. When asked where is home of the Jews, Helen Thomas wasn’t at all confused. She said straight, with a great smile full of false teeth: Poland, Germany, America.
 Well, Ms. Thomas, your apology is not accepted. Not because we Jews can’t forgive (look, we have forgiven Germany and Poland for killing most of us only sixty years ago). Not because we don’t believe you that your words were correct, and your apology was full of crap. But simply because most of the people who should accept your apology are already dead. It’s us, the remainders, the survivors, who look at you with awe, trying to understand: how the hell did you become a senior White House reporter?
But rather than accepting your apology, I want to thank you. Thank you for exposing what we always knew. You, and many others of the media, pretending to be “objective” are simply smarter than you. They just don’t say it. But trust me, it shows on screens all over the world. In my home too. My home in Israel that is.
Let me tell you something Ms. Helen. By asking us to go “home” to Poland and Germany, you’re asking us to commit collective suicide. Why don’t you just say it outright? Perhaps when you suggest for the Jews to go home, you mean the ultimate home: heaven.
The Helen Thomas Freudian Slip
When the Israeli Navy addressed the Marmara, part of the “Gaza Flotilla”, the radio officer had informed the passengers that they were entering an area of naval blockade. In response the ship’s passengers had made references to two very significant events to world history. They clearly said “shut up, go back to Auschwitz”, and “don’t forget 9/11 guys”.
As the son of a holocaust survivor, I take the first comment very seriously. As a citizen of the world, I take the second one very seriously as well. I suggest we all do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxY7Q7CvQPQ&feature=player_embedded
My mother was born in a concentration camp during World War II. My father was born in Jerusalem, under the British Mandate. My mother’s parents were born in Romania, where they were persecuted repeatedly over many years, until an ultimate decision was made to exterminate them. My father’s father was born in Morocco, and my father’s mother in Istanbul. All grandparents ended up in the hellhole called Israel, for one reason only. They thought it was the only place on the planet where they could walk with their heads up. They thought that since Jews lived in this remote, hostile and waterless place for thousands of years, they would be able to call this place their homeland.
They were wrong.
On 20,000 square kilometers, slightly smaller than the Garden State of New Jersey, live roughly six million Jews. Still short of the number of the destroyed, burned, gassed, shot, buried alive, and starved Jews who died during World War II. Yes, the reference is to the Holocaust, that minor event which put an end to the lives of 6.25 million Jews, 1.5 million of whom innocent children. 20,000 square kilometers. Imagine that. Just to give you an idea how small that is. Egypt is roughly 1,000,000 square kilometers. Fifty times larger. Fifty times. Even the small Hashemite Kingdom og Jordan, that tiny little country of nomads, is almost five times larger.
Israel is sixty two years old. Fighting for its survival, surrounded by blood thirsty enemies on all sides except one: the Mediterranean. 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and counting. I am not going to get into the futile argument of who started it, and who won. All I know is that while winning at the battle field, Israel has never won the hearts of the people of the world. While it was difficult in the past, with the years it became simply impossible. “Freedom Fighters”, the common words that describe terrorists, suicide bombers, Jihad Warriors, are much more well liked than Jews. Amazingly, a Palestinian waving bloody hands from a window in Ramallah is much more likable than a dead Jewish child. The Gaza Flotilla, an obvious masquerade, became the love of the media. Israeli soldiers being beaten to death by “Humanitarian Aid” messengers, are not very likable.
Let me be completely honest here. I’ve lived in the United States for many years, and in China for three years. Despite my heritage of persecution, I never experienced paranoia. I never felt that I’m being persecuted or discriminated against. I never experienced anti-Semitism. I always thought that people are basically good, objective, truth searching. Until now.
Today I can actually see that I am hated. There’s simply no other explanation. I can think of none. I am an Israeli left winger. I support those who think that all territories are to be surrendered, yes, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. I would love to live in this forsaken place in peace so I can raise my children, and worry about retirement. Israelis already paid a dear price for peace. And they are ready to pay more. But, if there’s anything in you that’s objective, if there’s anything in you that can overcome the millennia old fashion of hating Jews, please consider the following. Gaza is run by Hamas. Hamas is not exactly an organization you, the citizen of the world, would like to have running anything in your back yard. They run their own brethren in a way that would make your blood boil. They have little respect for their own lives, much less for their enemies, including you.
Hamas’ declared goal is to eliminate Israel altogether. Israel cannot afford a shipping line of arms going into Gaza. Not from Iran, not from anywhere else. The reason is simple. Boats can carry significant amounts of food and medicine, but also of arms and explosives. Would you want a known terrorist organization to sail to a port near you without someone taking a peek at its cargo? If you said no, please look me in the eye and tell me: why in the world would you hate me just because I’m Jewish?
So, after so many years of refusing to be paranoid, refusing to flash the Holocaust, refusing to believe in anti-semitism, I admit. I feel that I’m being chased, that no matter what I do, I am being judged by standards expected by nobody else. I feel that I’m expected to just get down on my knees, and wait for the Hamas’ axe to cut my head off. I feel that even if I raise my hand to protect my throat, I’d be accused by the United Nations, and quite a few other organizations and countries, of being violent, or exercising too much force. Why is the world so happy to give up the Jews? Do you honestly think that a Jews free world will be better?
Take a look at this video. Young Israeli soldiers who thought they were going to arrest humanitarian aid people, find themselves fighting for their lives. Beaten with hands, bats and chairs, thrown overboard. After looking at this video take a good look at yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself, not me, tell yourself that if it was your country, if it was your child, if it was you, you would have behaved differently. And then admit to yourself, loudly, look at yourself in the mirror and say it: I hate those Jews. I wish they were all dead. Then, maybe, we can talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiMjAULWn0
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