Segacs’s World I Know

I finally caught that miserable cold that’s been going around, so blogging’s been light these past couple of days. Yes, I know you don’t actually need a voice to type… but I just haven’t felt up to updating. Hopefully, regular postings will resume shortly.

Purim has a Scrooge, and his name is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef:

The crazy Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef has made some new ridiculous extremist pronouncements for Purim.

He says it’s forbidden to dress in a costume of the opposite sex for Purim, it’s forbidden to wear a Kaffiyeh (i.e. no Arafat costumes) and …. as a crowning touch, now it’s forbidden to give a Purim basket to a member of the opposite sex (the baskets, known as “mishloach manot” are a Purim holiday tradition, a basket filled with cookies and candy that you give out to friends and neighbors)

Yep, who knows what that kinky basket-exchanging can lead to…..

Hmmm, I wonder how he would’ve reacted to my sixth-grade Hebrew teacher dressing up as a nun?

The deadline for RRSP contributions for 2003 is midnight tonight. That’s in 35 minutes. But I, of course, am not a last-minute person. I made my contribution with plenty of leftover time… on Friday. Aren’t you proud of my planning and organization?

Actually I’m still adjusting to the idea that, for the first time in my life, I actually need the tax credit this year. It was so much more fun being a student and not paying taxes. I miss those days.

Les Invasions Barbares picked up the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

I guess I should be proud – a win for not only Canada, but my home province of Quebec. But I haven’t actually seen the film. And nobody except people from Canada will really care about who won one of those “filler” categories which, let’s face it, is exactly what the Best Foreign Language category is. When Canada starts making movies that can compete on equal footing in the big categories, the way our recording artists do at the Grammys, then maybe I’ll pay more attention.

The acceptance speech was at least not as dry as all the others of the night. “We’re so thankful that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King did not qualify in this category”. With 8 Oscars so far for LOTR, and counting, that statement elicted a good laugh.

Update: If that speech was one of the better acceptances of the Oscars, Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for Best Actor in Mystic River was one of the worst. He got up there and immediately said “the one thing any actor knows, other than the fact that there were no WMDs, is that there’s no such thing as ‘best’ actor”.

Does the man have so little class that he’s utterly incapable of shutting up about politics for one night?

Update #2: That’s 11 Oscars for Lord of the Rings.

Well, I guess I won’t be travelling to Saudi Arabia anytime soon (via Damian):

Visas will not be issued for the following groups of people:

• An Israeli passport holder or a passport that has an Israeli arrival/departure stamp.
• Those who don’t abide by the Saudi traditions concerning appearance and behaviors. Those under the influence of alcohol will not be permitted into the Kingdom.
• There are certain regulations for pilgrims and you should contact the consulate for more information.
• Jewish People

Oh well, there go my travel plans. Damn.

I guess I’ll just have to settle for going to Israel instead. (Countdown: 4 1/2 months – woohoo!)

Update (Friday Feb 27): Damian notes that the restrictions listed above – as well as the others regarding women – have disappeared from the Saudi tourism site since yesterday. I notice that they still appear in Google’s cache, though I wonder how long that will last too.

Okay, Friends is totally shamelessly copying Sex and the City…

One finale where the girl returns from Paris for the old boyfriend is enough, thanks, I don’t need to see it twice.

The strike tactics of Urgel Bourgie union workers give a whole new meaning to the word “disgusting”:

. . . 50 striking Urgel Bourgie workers cheered as [Judy Anthony’s aunt’s] casket was loaded into a hearse outside a funeral home. The strikers then formed a raucous cordon around the departing cortage.

“When they brought my aunt’s casket through the doors, that’s when the cheering and the clapping and the yelling started,” Anthony recounted.

“And as all the cars (bearing about 60 family members to the church service) went through this horrible gauntlet of strikers, they kept waving and shouting and clapping and cheering.

“It was like they were at a soccer match in Europe.”

Anthony said the antics were especially hard on her 73-year-old uncle, who had just lost his wife of 50 years.

About 300 Urgel Bourgie unionized funeral directors, office workers, undertakers and support staff walked off the job Dec. 9 after their demands for better pay and greater job security weren’t met by the century-old chain of funeral homes.

If you ask me, the only case the union members made is that they should all be fired for incompetence. The nature of their jobs demand that they treat grieving people with respect and dignity. No matter what their problems with management consist of, there’s no excuse for this kind of behaviour.

Anthony said her family bears no ill will toward the funeral company, which she said did an excellent job with limited resources. But she had little sympathy for union members.

“The clapping and the cheering are what got to me the most,” she said. “How can somebody who actually works in this industry clap and cheer a casket?”

How indeed?

Is it just me, or are people in my field taking a bit of a beating in the press lately:

Hey, I’d still rather be in advertising than a lawyer joke.

Meryl cites a Ma’ariv article about the victims of terrorism and the reasons for the security fence, and discusses how the world of terrorism is a small one:

It’s a small world, the world of terrorism. My sister-in-law’s cousin died in the World Trade Center. Everyone in my area knew someone who lost someone, or knew someone who knew someone. Even in a metropolitan area of what, 10-12 million?

Israel has about 5.4 million Jews. More than 7,000 Israelis have been killed or injured in terrorist attacks since September of 2000. You do the math. I’m not up to figuring how many September Elevenths that works out to. But I know that per capita, it’s far more than we lost.

The math has been done a number of ways. I’ve picked one. If we round the number of people killed and injured on 9/11 off to 10,000, in a country with approximately 250 million people, then on a per capita basis, the terrorism Israel has faced since September 2000 works out to about 30 September Elevenths.

30 times.

The actual number isn’t important. What is important is recognizing that Israel is about out of options. There is nothing the world will let Israel do to defend its citizens. It can’t counter-attack. It can’t use “excessive” (read: any) force. It can’t even build a fence. Could you imagine the world trying to tell the United States, after 30 September Elevenths in a row, that it has no right to go after Osama Bin Laden? And yet, that’s what happens with Israel’s polities of targeted assassinations against terrorists, or its house-to-house searches or bulldozing of the homes of suicide bombers.

I remember having, a few years ago, a discussion about the various forms of antisemitism that have evolved throughout Jewish history. Someone made the observation that one of the reasons the Holocaust was so much worse than, say, the Spanish Inquisition, is that the Inquisition allowed Jews to live if they converted to Christianity (or, in most cases, pretended to and didn’t get caught), while Hitler and the Nazis killed all Jews, converts, children of converts, or even those with a Jewish grandparent. Jewish law permits breaking just about any rule in order to save a life. But in the case of the Holocaust, there was no action that would allow a Jewish person to save his own life. There was nothing that anyone could say, or do, or renounce even, that would satisfy the murderers. They were targeted not for what they did but by the mere fact that they existed.

To borrow an analogy, Israel too is targeted not by what it does but merely because it exists.

Israel’s enemies won’t be satisfied with a pullout from the territories, or with a peace negotiation, or with granting Palestinian statehood, or with a rewriting of state laws, or with any action that Israel could possibly take, short of wiping itself off the map. Hamas doesn’t want Ramallah; they want Tel Aviv. It’s written in their charter, in black and white.

Israel’s enemies that won’t let it exist and its friends won’t let it defend itself. What does that leave us with? Israel has a right to exist, and to defend that existence. If a fence is needed to prevent more terror attacks and defend that existence, then Israel is within its rights to build it.