Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘allison kaplan sommer’

I know I’ve been incessantly linking to Allison lately. But I can’t recommend her blog enough, especially while she keeps writing posts like this one:

They see that when we try to make nice and compromise we get terror attacks. And when we’re tough and aggressive we get terror attacks. Nothing we do seems to lower the motivation to slaughter Israeli civilians — men, women, or children — and in the case of Hamas, to see the state of Israel destroyed. So since there’s absolutely nothing to lose by getting Yassin, and something to possibly gain — at least temporarily derailing the Hamas leadership structure, and hopefully weakening it long-term — so why not go ahead and do it?

It’s a similar equation as the fence. Yes, building this fence is pissing off the Palestinians big-time. But does anyone think that if we stopped building it, they would be so happy and grateful, terror attacks would stop? No. No fence equals attempts at terror attacks, and a fence equals attempts at terror attacks. So why in the world shouldn’t we support building a fence in the hopes of foiling a number of these attacks?

With nothing left to lose, let’s try to do what we can to protect ourselves. That’s the sentiment of the man on the street.

Harry disagrees:

I’m reading a lot of non-Israeli bloggers who are touting this as some huge victory for Israel and the best thing to happen since Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley made out at the MTV awards. It’s not. Yes, the man is evil. Does he deserve to die? Yes, of course. But could the security cabinet have really really thought about the consequences of this? I mean really?

Seeing as how I’m one of those “non-Israeli bloggers” that Harry accurately chastised for not being close enough to the situation to be able to fully appreciate the sentiments of Israelis, I won’t comment, except to say that somehow, I get the sense that Allison’s reaction is closer to the grim reality.

And check out Allison’s very fitting – and poignant – reflections on what it means to be a mother in Israel.

A close call for Meryl Yourish and I don’t blame her for being freaked out. Paul recounts his struggle to explain technology to octogenarians. And Damian contemplates life on Mars. (I can think of a few people we could ship there to start colonizing the place, personally. Though I doubt if a spaceship with Michael Moore AND Pat Buchanan would make it to Mars with everyone on board still alive.)

From Israel, Harry has a prayer that you won’t find in any traditional siddur. And Allison has Hamas’s particular brand of “feminism”.

David and Lynn disagree on the appropriateness of the Israeli ambassador’s response to the disgusting “Snow White” art exhibit in Sweden glorifying a Palestinian suicide bomber. Judith posted reactions from a number of other bloggers on the same subject. And Mike Silverman has the poster that puts a whole new meaning on the closing of the Passover seder.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

While I’ve been procrastinating, others have been posting.

Damian has the latest on the politician who just won’t leave office, and Paul has a few thoughts on the corruption within the Liberal government under said politician’s leadership. Steve has the shoot-an-FLQ-terrorist video game . . . and the offended reaction of a bunch of separatists with way too much time on their hands. And Occam’s Toothbrush has a link to a George Jonas story in the National Post on the real problem in the Palestinian society. (You’ll note that, unlike Jonas’s horribly sexist article on why women should be flattered to be groped by Arnold Schwarzenegger, this article has a web link).

Allison has a few thoughts on how the Israeli government can step up its PR by recognizing the contribution of bloggers to the pro-Israel effort. Lynn has a brutally honest article by what passes for a “human rights activist” in Jordan (read: someone who wants to destroy Israel). And Imshin helps Lynn figure out what Israeli turkeys say. (Personally, judging by the menus at most Israeli restaurants I’ve ever been at, I’d guess they probably say something like “I don’t want to be schnitzel!”)

For those of you who thought North American reality TV had hit rock bottom, Allison’s got the scoop on the latest and greatest in Israeli viewing entertainment:

My latest guilty pleasure is watching “Project Y,” the local reality show, which is a hybrid of “Big Brother” and “American Idol.” With a little bit of “Fame” mixed in.

The 20-somethings are all trapped in a house, and the viewers vote them off one by one, but they’ve all got show biz ambitions and spend their daytime hours in the house taking acting, voice and dance lessons — with the usual gossiping, partying and casual sex in the evenings.

The winner — the sole survivor — gets a contract for their own TV show.

So, I’m unloading the dishwasher and I’ve got it on in the background, and suddenly I hear screaming, “You Arab dog, you Palestinian terrorist! Go ahead blow yourself up, you suicide bomber! I dare you!” and a response, “I’ll kill you, you shiksa Russian whore sleazebag!”

Thinking that things are heating up in the house, I head over to the TV screen.

There were two of the show’s participants, Camilla, a Russian immigrant, and Fares, an Israeli Arab, engaged in a massive tickling and wrestling match on a bed and laughing their heads off. They were completely joking with each other.

Interviewed afterwards, they said that getting all this stuff out in the open and joking about it defused the tension. Hey, whatever works.

But I’d love to put THAT clip on Peter Jennings newscast and let him sort it out.

Does Israel have equivalents to raspberry awards?

Still, it’d be worth it to air a few episodes here, just to see the heads of the ultra-politically-correct wackos explode.

Digging through archives sometimes bears fruit. I was browsing the web and found a link that Allison Kaplan Sommer posted to an article she wrote back in 2002 on why the UN hates Israel.

In it, Allison does a very good job of exposing how the very structure of the UN puts Israel in a nearly impossible position:

The UN’s anti-Israel bias is rooted in the organization’s very structure. In the General Assembly, 130 of the 190 member nations will, almost automatically, vote against Israel.

[ . . . ]

Given the UN’s overwhelmingly third-world majority, the official says, the case against Israel is easy for the Arab states to make. Zionism is depicted simply as an extension of the history of European colonization of Asia, Africa, and South America–and just as these powers withdrew from their former colonies and granted them independence, they argue, so should the Jewish residents give up “occupied Palestinian territory.”

Allison quotes Montreal-based MP and human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler extensively. She discusses Israel’s exclusion prior to 2002 from any regional groups, and the effect it has had on the country’s ability to develop parity. She has plenty to say about the UN’s so-called “human rights commission”, at which 30% of resolutions are directed against Israel, and where accusations ranging the gamut from blood libel to Nazi equivalencies have been passed as resolutions. And she explains in layman’s terms why Israel remians a pariah state in the UN, while countries with much worse human rights records have been given a free pass:

“While theoretically this wide group does not need to vote together, their common history of fighting Western imperialism still binds them together,” says Becker. “Add to this the simple fact that, for the vast majority of these countries, it is simply not worth it from a practical point of view to anger the wealthy and oil-rich Arab world by opposing anti-Israel resolutions. They have a great deal to lose and not much to gain. It just pays for them to side with the Arabs.” “There is an institutionalized set of double standards,” adds Professor Cotler. Powerful countries with wide spheres of influence, or groups of countries, such as Russia, China and the Arab world, agree tacitly to ignore one another’s human rights violations. Israel has no such leverage.

The anti-Israel crowd loves to quote UN resolutions when it suits their purposes, failing of course to realize how biased they are. Other organizations have done plenty to expose the bias as well. AIPAC has a fact sheet, for example, and the Jewish Virtual Library keeps a record of all anti-Israel resolutions passed by the General Assembly by year.

The thing is, the UN’s anti-Israel bias isn’t exactly news. But sometimes it’s worth recalling some of these facts, because with all the shouting from the anti-Zionist crowd about resolutions that Israel is supposedly violating, it tends to get forgotten.

Damian Penny turned me onto a great blog by Israeli journalist Alison Kaplan Sommer entitled An Unsealed Room. Worth checking out.