Reason #2654

Reason why I love Israel #2654

To fend off boredom during the long hours of work in the library, I listen -through the internet- to Israeli radio stations. It is a good way to practice my Hebrew and to keep up to what it is really going on over in that turbulent side of the world. I like to listen, mostly, to religious radio stations. Today, while listening to a special program on the music and customs of the Jews of Egypt before their expulsion after the creation of the State of Israel. There was this song sang by author and songwriter Dudu Dheri about Maimonides. It could only be described as disco-pop. A schmaltzy beat with some off key flamenco guitars in the background and a synthetizer following the Arabic-style makamic recount of Maimonides' life, from his birth in Cordova up to his death in Egypt under the personal service of Salah-al-Din. I cannot take the melody of the chorus out of my head: "Harambam! Hanesher Hagadol! Gadol behochmato shenata bo boro" (Maimonides! The great Eagle! Great was his wisdom which his Creator planted in him.)

I wonder when will we have vallenatos in Colombia that tell the heroic struggles of our philosophers, or a beautiful Irish reel narrating, among the wilting sound of the tin whistles, the life of Bishop Berkeley. Until then, this will remain a schmaltzy and sentimental reason, trivial of course, to love Israel more and more.

¡Qué grandes son tus obras Hashem, muy profundo es tu pensamiento! (Ps. 92)

Primero un hat tip a srguillot por haberme interesado por la órbita de Mercurio. Definitivamente hay cosas maravillosas en este mundo. Algunas de ellas sólo son visibles en el ojo de la mente pero no por ello menos hermosas.

At certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun rise about halfway, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same Mercurian day. This is because approximately four days prior to perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity exactly equals its angular rotational velocity so that the Sun's apparent motion ceases; at perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity then exceeds the angular rotational velocity. Thus, the Sun appears to be retrograde. Four days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes.

(Tomado de Wikipedia)

עושה שלום במרומיו הוא יעשה שלום עלינו

Aquel que hace la paz en la alturas, haga las paz entre nosotros y dentro de todo Israel. Amén.
Que el orden político del mundo imite el órden cósmico que veían los medievales en las esferas (no el caos que nos muestra el Hubble), al menos mientras nos recuperamos (todos) de este golpe.

Ibn al-Shatir's model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of epicycles in a Ptolemaic enterprise. From T.E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge, 1993).

My sister is great!

¡Mucha suerte en la sustentación!
Tu hermano que te extraña en esta diáspora áspera,
3.1416

Colombian Jew making it big in Israel (no, it's not me)

Good to know that people from the Old Country are making good inroads in the Altneuland. Hearty Mazel Tov!

New student union leader wants to bring WUJS 'back to its roots'

By ISSAC APTER

As students prepare to return to university campuses across
the globe in the coming weeks, Daniel Translateur is settling into his position
as the new chairman of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS). Less than a
month after his unanimous appointment by the WUJS executive, Translateur, an
immigrant from Colombia with extensive experience in Jewish communal service,
already has a clear vision of what he would like to accomplish during his term
as chairman.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

350 años sin Baruj

Para Adón Pronek en pago de una conversación perdida

El 27 de julio de 1656 (hace 350 años) los parnasim y rabinos de la comunidad sefaradí de Amsterdam decidieron excomulgar al jóven Bento de Espinosa, Baruj bar Mijael por sus heréticas ideas sobre Dios y el Universo. El jóven Baruj, de 24 años, no se dignó a comparecer ante los Sabios de Ley arriesgándose a sufrir la misma suerte de su pariente Uriel DaCosta. Ausente del tribunal estaba también su maestro Rabbí Mennashe Ben Israel quien, hace años había visto sus prometedoras habilidades intelectuales y ahora se hallaba en Inglaterra negociando la readmisión de su pueblo a las costas inglesas. Y así, en un cuarto pequeño, olorosa tal vez del tabaco crecido en el lugar dónde hasta hace poco se levantaban las Torres gemelas, este decreto fue pronunciado:

Con la sentencia de los ángeles y con el dicho de los santos, con el consentimiento del Dios bendito y el consentimiento de toda esta Santa Comunidad y en presencia de estos santos libros, con los seiscientos trece preceptos que en ellos están escritos, nosotros excomulgamos, apartamos y execramos a Baruch de Espinoza con la excomunión con que excomulgó Josué a Jericó, con la maldición con que maldijo Elías a los jóvenes y con todas las maldiciones que están escritas en la Ley. Maldito sea de día y maldito sea de noche, maldito al acostarse y maldito al levantarse, maldito sea al entrar y al salir; no quiera el Altísimo perdonarle, hasta que su furor y su celo abracen a este hombre; lance sobre él todas las maldiciones escritas en el libro de esta Ley, borre su nombre de bajo de los cielos y sepárelo, para su desgracia, de todas las tribus de Israel, con todas las maldiciones del firmamento, escritas en el Libro de la Ley. Y nosotros, los unidos al Altísimo, vuestro Dios, todos vosotros: advirtiendo que nadie puede hablar oralmente ni por escrito, ni hacerle ningún favor ni estar con él bajo el mismo techo ni a menos de cuatro codos de él, ni leer papel hecho o escrito por él.

Este episodio, en toda su trágica parafenarlia, es uno de los momentos fundacionales de la modernidad y por lo mismo, rodeado de esa aura mítica: el héroe de la modernidad enfrentando a los dragones del oscurantismo. No obstante, éste es un mito, una cortina de humo que oculta el hecho verdaderamente relevante. La excomunión o jerem, a pesar de su dramático lenguaje, era la única herramienta de una comunidad que carecía de fuerza coercitiva para garantizar la obediencia de sus decretos. Más aún, esta herramienta era usada con cotidiana frecuencia. Excomulgados fueron deudores morosos, jóvenes que se rehusaban a pagar la dote prometida a sus esposas, comerciantes que habían prometido donaciones y habían demorado sus pagos. Excomulgados fueron los rabinos y los profesores de la comunidad de Amsterdam. No sólo los sofisticados herejes como Baruj o Uriel.


La idea de la excomunión era poner a la persona por fuera de la comunidad y de esta manera forzarlo a cumplir con las condiciones propuestas por la comunidad. El ostracismo era una herramienta particularmente poderosa en la comunidad judía y en el resto de las comunidades minoritarias en Europa. Recordemos que los judíos no eran ciudadanos de los países que habitaban y, por lo tanto, sus miembros sólo tenían derechos en cuanto miembros activos de una comunidad tolerada. Si la persona era expulsada de la comunidad, perdía de facto todos sus derechos frente al estado que reconocía a la colectividad pero no al individuo. Sólo hasta las revoluciones ciudadanas del siglo xviii, los judíos serían otorgados derechos en tanto ciudadanos e individuos.
La verdadera revolución Spinoziana fue haber decidido no obedecer este jerem: decidir que el individuo podía vivir por fuera de su existencia colectiva en la comunidad religiosa o étnica, que el individuo podía representarse a sí mismo en el mundo sin la necesidad de intermediarios. En este caso, la judeidad de Spinoza fue una aliada de su revolución, si Spinoza hubiera sido holandés, la iglesia calvinista hubiera podido mandar a sus fuerzas policiales para obligarlo a reconciliarse con la Iglesia Reformada Holandesa. Pero un miembro tranquilo de una comunidad minoritaria sin capacidad policial, pudo escurrírsele entre los dedos al sistema que había definido la vida social de Europa desde la polis griega.

La libertad para el individuo ganada por Spinoza al declararse el primer hombre moderno, el individuo sin ataduras, claramente ha pasado a convertirse no sólo en un derecho que creemos natural sino también en una necesidad del hombre occidental. En este sentido, Spinoza es un héroe de la modernidad. Pero como todo héroe verdadero, Spinoza es un héroe trágico: la libertad del individuo ha producido también la soledad moderna. El individuo sin ataduras es también un individuo sin asideros. El individuo que ha perdido su conexión con el grupo también ha perdido buena parte de su brújula moral.


¿Qué hacer? ¿Acaso es posible una reconciliación de Spinoza, el hombre -no el filósofo- con la colectividad? ¿Acaso podemos vivir el sueño de Spinoza sin caer en sus pesadillas? ¿Acaso puede Spinoza perdonar a los rabinos de Amsterdam? ¿Acaso podemos, como Ben Gurion, venir trescientos años después y perdonar a Baruj?

If you are interested in the war in Lebanon, read this

Querido hermano/a colombiano: ¿Cómo te explico? ¿Cómo te puedo dar a entender mi posición? ¿Cómo podemos tener una discusión civilizada al respecto cuando el colombiano promedio descubrió al Hizbalá hace dos semanas? ¿Si seguimos hablando de cosas que no sabemos? ¿Si en Colombia descubrimos que en las guerras mueren civiles sólo en la sección internacional? Y en fín, así es difícil discutir. Bloom ya está hastiado. Caballero puede escribir lo que quiera. El Tiempo puede publicar (o dejar de publicar) lo que se le de la gana. Los blogs (tanto en TOL como en otras partes) rabian hasta babear. Al final la gente cree lo que quiere creer o lo que su ignorancia o sus prejuicios le dictan. Mi único punto es que esta guerra se pelea tanto con bazukas como con cámaras y las cámaras tienen su objetivo claro. Truth and justice do seem to lie in the eyes of the beholder. Do you trust your eyes?

THE MEDIA AIMS ITS MISSILES

Media Missiles. Working for the enemy.
By Tom Gross
National Post (Canada) / Jerusalem Post (Israel) / National Review (U.S.) /
Ma'ariv (Israel)
August 2, 2006


Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current
conflict in Lebanon. They are also actively fanning the flames.

The BBC World Service has a strong claim to be the number-one villain. It has
come to sound like a virtual propaganda tool for Hizbullah. And as it
desperately attempts to prove that Israel is guilty of committing "war crimes"
and "crimes against humanity," it has introduced a new charge – one which I have
heard several times on air in recent days.

The newscaster reads out carefully selected "audience comments." Among these are
invariably contained some version of the claim that "Israel's attack on Lebanon"
will serve as a "recruitment" drive for al-Qaeda.

But if anything is going to win new recruits for the likes of Osama bin Laden,
it will not be Israel's defensive actions, which are far less damaging than
Western TV stations would have us believe, but the inflammatory and hopelessly
one-sided way in which they are being reported by those very same news
organizations.

While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of
pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are
portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg
in the aftermath of World War II air raids. International television channels
have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a
few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been
razed.

A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in
Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hizbullah command centers
in the city's southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of
Beirut, apart from strategic sites like airport runways used to ferry Hizbullah
men and weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.

From the distorted imagery, selective witness accounts, and almost
round-the-clock emphasis on casualties, you would be forgiven for thinking that
the level of death and destruction in Lebanon is on a par with that in Darfur,
where Arab militias are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs, or with
the 2004 tsunami that killed half a million in Southeast Asia.

In fact Israel has taken great care to avoid killing civilians – even though
this has proven extremely difficult and often tragically impossible, since
members of Hizbullah, the self-styled "Party of God," have deliberately
ensconced themselves in civilian homes. Nevertheless the civilian death toll has
been mercifully low compared to other international conflicts in recent years.

A CNN MAN LETS SLIP

The BBC, which courtesy of the British tax payer is the world's biggest and most
lavishly funded news organization, would of course never reveal how selective
their reports are, since such a disclosure might spoil their campaign to
demonize Israel and those who support her. But one senior British journalist,
working for another company, last week let slip how the news media allows its
Mideast coverage to be distorted.

"CNN senior international correspondent" Nic Robertson admitted that his
anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon,
was stage-managed from start to finish by Hizbullah. He revealed that his story
was heavily influenced by Hizbullah's "press officer" and that Hizbullah have
"very, very sophisticated and slick media operations."

When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program "Reliable
Sources," Robertson acknowledged that Hizbullah militants had instructed the CNN
camera team where and what to film. Hizbullah "had control of the situation,"
Robertson said. "They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly
didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was
underneath."

Robertson added that Hizbullah has "very, very good control over its areas in
the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access into those areas. You don't
get in there without their permission. We didn't have enough time to see if
perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a
Hizbullah fighter by night."

Yet "Reliable Sources," presented by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is
broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers
around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn from CNN's "Senior
international correspondent" that the pictures they saw from Beirut were
carefully selected for them by Hizbullah.

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog
while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher
Allbritton, casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: "To the south, along
the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say
too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport,
and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

Robertson is not the only foreign journalist to have misled viewers with
selected footage from Beirut. NBC's Richard Engel, CBS's Elizabeth Palmer, and a
host of European and other networks, were also taken around the damaged areas by
Hizbullah minders. Palmer commented on her report that "Hizbullah is also
determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see."

Palmer's honesty is helpful. But it doesn't prevent the damage being done by
organizations such as the BBC. First the BBC gave the impression that Israel had
flattened the greater part of Beirut. Then to follow up its lop-sided coverage,
its website helpfully carried full details of the assembly points for an
anti-Israel march due to take place in London, but did not give any details for
a rally in support of Israel also held in London a short time later.

IN AZERI AND UZBEK, PASHTO AND PERSIAN

Indeed, the BBC's coverage of the present war has been so extraordinary that
even staunch BBC supporters in London seem rather embarrassed – in conversation,
not on the air, unfortunately.

If the BBC were just a British problem that would be one thing, but it is not.
No other station broadcasts so extensively in dozens of languages, on TV, radio
and online.

Its radio service alone attracts over 163 million listeners. It pours forth its
worldview in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic
and Turkish. Needless to say it declines to broadcast in Hebrew, even though it
does broadcast in the languages of other small nations: Macedonian and Albanian,
Azeri and Uzbek, Kinyarwanda and Kyrgyz, and so on. (It doesn't broadcast in
Kurdish either; but then the BBC doesn't concern itself with Kurdish rights or
aspirations since they are persecuted by Moslem-majority states like Syria and
Iran. We didn't hear much on the BBC, for example, when dozens of Syrian Kurds
were killed and injured in March 2004 by President Assad's regime.)

It is not just that the supposed crimes of Israel are completely overplayed, but
the fact that this is a two-sided war (started, of course, by Hizbullah) is all
but obscured. As a result, in spite of hundreds of hours of broadcast by dozens
of BBC reporters and studio anchors, you wouldn't really know that hundreds of
thousands of Israelis have been living in bomb shelters for weeks now, tired,
afraid, but resilient; that a grandmother and her seven-year old grandson were
killed by a Katyusha during a Friday night Sabbath dinner; that several other
Israeli children have died.

You wouldn't have any real understanding of what it is like to have over 2000
Iranian and Syrian rockets rain down indiscriminately on towns, villages and
farms across one third of your country, aimed at killing civilians.

You wouldn't really appreciate that Hizbullah, far from being some rag-tag
militia, is in effect a division in the Iranian revolutionary guards, with
relatively advanced weapons (UAVs that have flown over northern Israel,
extended-range artillery rockets, anti-ship cruise missiles), and that it has a
global terror reach, having already killed 114 people in Argentina during the
1990s.

The BBC and other media have carried report after report on the damaged Lebanese
tourist industry, but none on the damaged Israeli one, even though at least one
hotel in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, was hit by a Hizbullah rocket. There
are reports on Lebanese children who don't know where they will be going to
school, but none on Israeli ones.

ET TU, TELEGRAPH?

The relentless broadcast attacks on Israel have led to some in the print media
indulging in explicit anti-Semitism.

Many have grown accustomed to left-wing papers such as Britain's Guardian
allowing their Mideast coverage to spill over into something akin to
anti-Semitism. For example, last month a cartoon by the Guardian's Martin Rowson
depicted Stars of David being used as knuckle dusters on a bloody fist.

Now the Conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph, Britain's best-selling quality
daily, and previously one of the only papers in Europe to give Israel a fair
hearing, has got in on the act. The cartoon at the top of the Telegraph comment
page last Saturday showed two identical scenes of devastation, exactly the same
in every detail. One was labeled: "Warsaw 1943"; the other: "Tyre, 2006."

A politician had already given the cue for this horrendous libel. Conservative
MP Sir Peter Tapsell told the House of Commons that British Prime Minister Tony
Blair was "colluding" with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the
okay to wage a war crime "gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish
quarter of Warsaw."

Of course, there was no "Jewish quarter" of Warsaw. In case anyone need
reminding (Sir Peter obviously does) the ghetto in the Polish capital,
established in October 1940, constituted less than three square miles. Over
400,000 Jews were then crammed into it, about 30 percent of the population of
Warsaw. 254,000 were sent to Treblinka where they were exterminated. Most of the
rest were murdered in other ways. The ghetto was completely cleared of Jews by
the end of May 1943.

ECHOING SCHINDLER'S LIST

The picture isn't entirely bleak. Some British and European politicians, on both
left and right, have been supportive of Israel. So have some magazines, such as
Britain's Spectator. So have a number of individual newspaper commentators.

But meanwhile anti-Semitic coverage and cartoons are spreading across the globe.
Norway's third largest paper, the Oslo daily Dagbladet, ran a cartoon comparing
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the infamous Nazi commander SS Major Amon
Goeth who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them from his balcony – as
depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. (A month
earlier Dagbladet published an article, "The Third Tower," which questioned
whether Muslims were really responsible for the September 11 attacks.)

Antonio Neri Licon of Mexico's El Economista drew what appeared to be a Nazi
soldier with – incredibly – stars of David on his uniform. The "soldier" was
surrounded by eyes that he had apparently gouged out.

A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butchers
knife covered in blood. In the leading Australian daily The Age, a cartoon
showed a wine glass full of blood being drunk in a scene reminiscent of a
medieval blood libel. In New Zealand, veteran cartoonist Tom Stott came up with
a drawing which equated Israel with al-Qaeda.

At least one leading European politician has also vented his prejudice through
visual symbolism. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wore an
Arab scarf during an event at which he condemned Israel, but not Hizbullah, who
he presumably thinks should not be stopped from killing Israelis.

THE ASHES OF AUSCHWITZ

It's entirely predictable that all this violent media distortion should lead to
Jews being attacked and even murdered, as happened at a Seattle Jewish center
last week.

When live Jews can't be found, dead ones are targeted. In Belgium last week, the
urn that contained ashes from Auschwitz was desecrated at the Brussels memorial
to the 25,411 Belgian Jews deported to Nazi death camps. It was smashed and
excrement smeared over it. The silence from Belgian leaders following this
desecration was deafening.

Others Jews continued to be killed in Israel itself without it being mentioned
in the media abroad. Last Thursday, for example, 60-year-old Dr. Daniel Ya'akovi
was murdered by the Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the terrorist group within Fatah that
Yasser Arafat set up five years ago using European Union aid money.

But this is far from being an exclusively Jewish issue. Some international
journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don't
understand yet that Hizbullah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement
that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those – Moslem, Christian, Hindu
and Jew – who don't abide by its wishes.

(Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph
and New York Daily News.)