The Last Exile

Mazel Tov to Howard Jacobson who has won the British Booker prize for his book The Finkler Question but I cannot resist taking a few shots at the Toronto Star for pussy-footing around and not fully airing the premises which Jacobson’s book revolves around. But first, the Toronto Star’s two shillings.

But in the end, it was the underdog — Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question — who won.

When Jacobson, 60, took the podium to claim the £50,000 prize, he first said he was speechless. But the London-based author, who had been nominated for the prize in 2002 and 2006, joked that he did have a few in his pocket. “The language in these speeches grows less gracious. You start wanting to berate the judges for the awards they didn’t give you,” he said. “But the judges of the 2010 prize surpass all praise.” The Finkler Question, published by Bloomsbury, is Jacobson’s 11th novel — a poignantly comic story of love, loss, male friendship and what it means to be Jewish today.

All of which is true – as far as it goes – but there is a deeper, more tragic-comic side to Jacobson’s award winning book which probably made the editorial department of the Toronto Star instinctively winch and snot out coffee from their noses when the news was passed around that The Finkler Question had won the coveted English language prize for fiction. So let me quote Howard Jacobson writing about Anti-Zionism in the Jewish Chronicle Online.

Every other Wednesday, except for festivals and High Holy-days, an anti-Zionist group called ASHamed Jews meets in an upstairs room in the Groucho Club in Soho to dissociate itself from Israel, urge the boycotting of Israeli goods, and otherwise demonstrate a humanity in which they consider Jews who are not ASHamed to be deficient. ASHamed Jews came about as a consequence of the famous Jewish media philosopher Sam Finkler’s avowal of his own shame on Desert Island Discs.

“My Jewishness has always been a source of pride and solace to me,” he told Radio Four’s listeners, not quite candidly, “but in the matter of the dispossession of the Palestinians I am, as a Jew, profoundly ashamed.”
“Profoundly self-regarding,” you mean, was his wife’s response. But then she wasn’t Jewish and so couldn’t understand just how ashamed in his Jewishness an ashamed Jew could be. That I know of, there is no Jewish media philosopher named Sam Finkler nor any anti-Zionist group meeting regularly at the Groucho Club. They exist only in the pages of my new novel, The Finkler Question, and any relation between them and real people or organisations is of course coincidental.

Though the ASHamed Jews are a satiric invention, my novel is not primarily a satire. It is a bleak tale of love and loyalty and the loss of both. It tells of three men, old friends, two of whom have recently lost their wives, and a third who has no wife to lose.

The widowers are Jewish, the third man is not. But he would like to be. He envies his Jewish friends their warmth, their cleverness, the love they have inspired, and even their bereavement. It is a bitter irony that he protests his admiration for all things Jewish just as many Jews are protesting their desire not to be Jewish at all.

As the rats desert the sinking ship, he alone – it might appear – is left to clamber aboard.
The ostensible cause of these defections is, of course, Israel. Not the actual Israel. For the purposes of my narrative, Israel exists only poetically, in the imaginations of those who cannot adequately describe themselves without it.

I happen to think this is largely true outside my novel as well: that Israel performs a function greater than itself, enabling or disabling ideas about belonging and disengagement, fanning the flames of ancient allegiances and animosities. For many Jews and non-Jews in this country Israel has become a figure of speech, the occasion for wild and whirling words, a pretext for bottling up or setting loose emotions which originate somewhere else entirely.

I began writing the The Finkler Question in 2008 but it came to the boil for me in the early months of 2009 at the time of Operation Cast Lead, as a consequence of which, or as a consequence of the reporting of which – for it, too, like everything else to do with Israel outside Israel, was figmentary – England turned into an uncustomarily frightening place for Jews. I am not speaking only of the physical threats and even damage that some Jews endured, attacks on persons, synagogues, cemeteries, the Jew-hatred expressed by primary school children etc, but of that anti-Zionist rhetoric which, in its inflatedness and fervour – a rhapsodic hyperbole growing more and more detached from any conceivable reality – was so upsetting in itself. You do not have to be punched in the face to feel you’ve been assaulted: intellectual violence is its own affront.

I have to admit I haven’t read The Finkler Question but I do need some travel reading for Friday’s journey and will pick it up. And did I mention for a 68 year old man…he’s kind of hot?

About time someone asked about the parents of the Arab child rock throwers and threatened to call in child protective services. Arutz Sheva:

Following several Arab lynch attempts in the Shiloach-City of David areas of Jerusalem, the Knesset’s Child Welfare Committee held a session entitled, “The Involvement of Children in Rock-Throwing in Shiloach.” MKs Ben-Ari and Ahmed Tibi argued furiously.
MK Ben-Ari (National Union) said that anyone, including children, who throws rocks and endangers Jewish lives should know that he can be shot. Arab MK Tibi said Ben-Ari and the “entire committee” should see a psychiatrist. The session was called by Committee Chairman MK Danny Danon of the Likud.

MK Taleb a-Sana (Raam-Taal) confronted MK Ben-Ari and called him a fascist. Ben Ari replied: “you are a terrorist who came here to provoke and you use children as killers.” Danon had a-Sana removed when he refused to behave properly. Three days ago, David Be’eri, founder of the Jewish community in Ir David-Shiloach, entered into a rock-throwing ambush; in his haste to escape, he hit two rock-throwing children with his car. It also appears from video of the event that he had swerved to avoid hitting a third, smaller child. The event was filmed by cameramen who “happened” to be on the scene.

“You’re all crazy,” Tibi railed. “This session is because of a boy who was hurled into the air by a car, not because he threw rocks!”

But its MK Danon who injects the only sane reponse to this sorry state of affairs within the Palestinian position:

“This is not the first time that the Arab population in Silwan (Shiloach) uses children dangerously and cynically by sending them to clash with Jewish passersby,” MK Danon said. “Their parents must be summoned for immediate investigation. We must do whatever is necessary to stop this phenomenon of children throwing rocks.”

Absolutely, and the sooner the better.

Another night of talking until pretty much the dawn has left me pretty much brain dead. So I just wanted to offer up this story from the Moscow Times.

A dispute has escalated over plans to build a mosque in Moscow’s southeastern outskirts, with local residents vowing to send an appeal with about 2,000 signatures to President Dmitry Medvedev and nationalist groups promising to support them.

Muslim leaders defend the need for the worship site, saying the capital’s four mosques are overflowing with people.

Residents of the Tekstilshchiki district in southeastern Moscow will send Medvedev a complaint signed by more than 1,800 people opposing construction of the mosque, mainly on the grounds that it might cause massive traffic jams in the area on Islamic holidays, activist Mikhail Butrimov told The Moscow Times on Friday. Butrimov leads the movement Moi Dvor, or My Yard, which supports residents in their fight against the mosque.

Butrimov said residents asked local authorities several years ago to build a Russian Orthodox chapel or create a park on the unused lot. But authorities banned construction on the plot, saying utilities ran underneath it, he said.

Apparently, New York isn’t the only city where the citizenry are up in arms over the building of a mosque – all of which makes me wonder if there is a Russian equivalent of the American Tea Party movement.

My calendar runs out at the end of September and I spent a fruitless few hours looking for a replacement this afternoon. Of course, my year ends sometime in September so a standard 2011 calendar leaves me short a few months. Usually, I order calendars from the Hebron Community but this year I have been exceptional busy and distracted and so I just forgot. Besides, I like have the sunset times as well as the Jewish months so your standard kitty-flower calendar just doesn’t work for me. Just after I came home from the futile calendar hunt I decided I would check to see what mail to see what has arrived in the last few days. Low and behold, I received another calendar from the Hebron community. These guys so rock.

In other news today, another Palestinian terror attack failed to murder a pregnant woman and her husband outside the South Hebron Hills on Route 60. Mother, Father, and son are all doing well.

In Jerusalem, the peace partners have decided to commemorate the day with stonings, firebombs and more rioting all of which means its just another day in Jerusalem.

The Latma people have done it again. This time it’s ‘Shlomit builds a succah’ and destroys the peace process.

To say I have been distracted in the last few weeks is merely to underscore the the extent of my disengagement with just about everything. But that being said, its not like everything has slipped under the K-radar. I notice and make note which is why I am going to mark these two stories which on the surface seemingly have very little to do with each other. The Jerusalem Post is carrying a report from an Arab paper that the Obama administration is demanding the Israeli government extend the building freeze for another 3 months.

The Obama administration wants Israel to expand the 10-month moratorium on West Bank settlement construction for another three months, according to London-based paper A-sharq al-Awsat. The Arabic language paper reported Thursday morning that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had agreed to the US suggestion, but that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had yet to respond

.The report came after hours of discussions at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem between Netanyahu, Abbas, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their respective staffs on Wednesday night. There were indications, specifically from US Mideast envoy George Mitchell, that the sides were not only talking about how to overcome the settlement construction moratorium, but also about core issues such as security, Jerusalem, borders and refugees. In his comments after the trilateral meeting however, Mitchell refused to shed any light on the nature of the compromise being worked out on the moratorium issue, other than to say the issue was being tackled, and that progress was being made.

Now while the White House pressures the Israeli government to make more concessions for the sake of peace and the alleged Israeli partners for peace in the south have Israel under rocket attack again. Jerusalem Post

The attacks from the Gaza Strip escalated on Wednesday with 10 rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel – including two containing phosphorus – as defense officials predicted that the violence would quiet down after Succot. The violence peaked as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time since the launch of the new round of peace talks in Washington two weeks ago.

Rockets and shells pounded the Eshkol region throughout the day. One of the rockets – a 122-mm. Katyusha – hit just north of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported. Gazan rocket attacks have been increasing since before Rosh Hashana, understood by the IDF to be part of a Hamas attempt to torpedo the peace talks with the PA.

The assessment within Military Intelligence is that the wave of increased terror will continue until the Jewish holiday season finishes at the end of the month. The IDF does not attribute too much significance to the use of phosphorus mortar shells, which have been fired into Israel in the past, most recently during Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. The assumption in the IDF Southern Command is that the group that fired the mortars did not know that they contained phosphorus. These shells carry less explosive material than standard mortars, but are highly flammable.

Now the choice the Israeli prime minister has to make is simply this – should the building freeze be extended in courtesy to the failed leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which would endanger his standing with his coalition government and break faith with the Israeli people – in effect, put events into motion which will continue to play Russian roulette with the ordinary lives of Israelis or draw the line in the sand and stand up to pressures of both the White House and the Palestinian Authority?

Now there are many competing voices for our attention but the one sound we do not hear is the cries of outrage from all the usual suspects condemning the continued use of phosphorus munitions against Israeli civilians by the Palestinians. We even have the IDF play down the use of such munitions and the one question no one asks is ‘why’.

So I have been off-line and not paying much attention to anything and have been busy playing catch up this morning with the 2500+ things in my reader. Remarkably, I have discovered the world is pretty much the same as when I left it. Kassams are still falling, the peace process is stuck in redux, and just what exactly is the Palestinian leadership’s obligations to the process? Just once I would like to read an Israeli Prime Minister is refusing to come to the peace talks unless Palestinians stop building in the disputed territories.

It is probably pure callousness on my part but I find the excess of emotion on 9/11 rather wearying. 9/11 changed everything, and yet, what has really changed other than we wallow in the alleged ‘holiness’ of a deeply profane act? The most remarkably thing I have learned so far is if you want to drink healthy orange juice; squeeze the oranges yourself, but deep down – we all knew that.

Less than 24 hours after the Israeli Prime Minister left Israel to go the United States to participate in the ongoing peace talks four Israeli civilians were murdered in an ambush as they drove on highway 60 outside the Hebron area.

Their deaths were inevitable. It is a cycle, a pattern, we have seen it play out over and over again as peace negotiations begin. Every time it happens, there are official announcements from all interested parties that the participants will not let these deaths deter them from continuing negotiations which lead nowhere quickly.

Why this time should be different from any other talks when the Palestinian leadership is represented by the weakest leader the PLO has ever produced, a leadership camp which fractured and fraught with competing and conflicted interests should produce a different result than all the other xxx times peace talks have commenced; beyond my ability to engage in irrationality. And the Americans this time around are no better. Ynet News is quoting US Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Crowley as saying:

“We also are cognizant that there may well be actors in the region who are deliberately making these kinds of attacks in order to try to sabotage the process,” he said.

All of which goes to prove he just doesn’t get it. These aren’t actors, actors pretend to kill people, but are instead Israel’s neighbours and alleged peace partners except they are not prime for peace but war.

As a show of …good faith – the Palestinian Authority has rounded up 200 suspected Hamas members in the West Bank. Personally, given the area and its’ history, I would suggest rounding up the Palestinian security forces for interrogation would be a far more fruitful endeavour for appending the murderers. Colour me cynical, but using the ambush as a pretext for jailing one’s political proponents doesn’t strike me as taking one for Team Justice and Peace.

Ha’aretz is reporting Labor Minister of Defense Ehud Barak is suggesting Israel is willing to cede part of Jerusalem ahead of negotiations – and this after the murder of four Israelis. It just might be in Israel’s best interest to cede Barak to the Palestinians instead. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

What Bibi needs tell Obama is simply this; He is ready to meet the Palestinian leadership after the Palestinian have worked out their internal matters, and the Palestinian people are prepared for peace, real peace, which includes painful compromises on their part - as otherwise there is simply not anything to negotiate or even say. Time to go home and bury the dead and fortify Yisrael for the next round.

Until then, let’s shelve the two-state peace talks and explore the possiblity of a one state discussion.

I just finished watching Mad Men’s Season 4, episode 5 – The Chrysanthemum and the Sword so this Jezebel article caught my eye. I voted for the Ken doll…thank G-d, the Last Amazon never played with barbies. Her father would never have been able to act so resolutely in a ‘crisis’.

Okay so my personal life is busy but it’s always busy. I’m less in engaged because there is so much news going on that I just don’t care enough about to have more than a knee-jerk response. I do not care Tiger Woods’ divorce is finalized since I am not included in the settlement.

Pakistan hasn’t asked the government deploy the Dart team…oh, well, their loss and my wallet is safe for another day. Of course I am completely apathetic towards Pakistan – even on a good day.

The city of Toronto is primed to elect a buffoon for a mayor. Oh well, he’ll join the ranks of other primates we have elected. I expect Toronto will survive.

A new biography is released on Canadian radio personality Peter Gzowski and my first reaction was – Peter who? Once I found out all I thought was who really cares? The book will be lucky to sell 5,000 copies and I bet most of the sales will come from Libraries.

Iran – enough already – just bomb them and get it over with and let the chips fall where they may.

Anne Frank’s tree has fallen down. I know I am a lousy human being (see above) but I am just not inspired nor filled with sorrow for the tree, and did you really expect it to last forever?

Peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians…same old song and dance. What will make these talks very different from any other peace discussions? In fact, I expect these talks to have less ‘cred’ than any of the previous talks considering that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas can no longer be considered to represent the Palestinian side – even legally - as his term of office ran out two years ago. Furthermore, Hamas is ruling the Gaza Strip and making in roads in the West Bank and until Fatah and Hamas bury the AK-47 there are two different narratives coming out of the Palestinian camps – competing world views even. Meanwhile the pedestrians on the Palestinian street have moved on and are discussing one-state solutions.

Steve Harper is evil and hates puppies – I get it, but what the conservatives don’t quite get is that Harper has so polarized the country that his legacy borders strictly on what divides and demeans us as a nation. There is no way this country is going forward until he’s removed as party leader so time to call a leadership review. Harper’s taken conservatives as far as he can…although the lack of quality conservatives is what continues to dog the party and explains why the conservatives cannot make real traction in the polls with support always ebbing and flowing just under the 40% mark.

The almost-ground-zero-mosque/Islamic community centre. If I have to draw the line anywhere; I am always going to come down on the side of religious liberty. Take it from one group and it’s just a matter of time before you attempt to tell me where, when and how I can pray. Having said that, I find it interesting that President Obama made an initial statement in support of mosque/Islamic community centre on the grounds of religious liberty and yet sees no conflict or hypocrisy in telling another sovereign nation that Jewish landowners cannot occupy or build on land they hold legal title to. Oh well.

I am really on a time crunch but this Jerusalem post article is too important not to post:

They are hung from trees by metal chains attached to their arms and provided with plastic bags to collect their urine to drink when they are thirsty. They are gang raped, tortured with electricity and held prisoner in desert camps. When they escape they are shot, either by their Beduin captors or by Egyptian police. These savage and disturbing details, published piecemeal over the years, are just a part of the picture of what is being done in Egypt’s Sinai desert to African migrants.

The story probably begins with the end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War in 2000, the beginning of the Darfur genocide in 2003 and the end of the war in South Sudan in 2005, each of which in its own way created numerous refugees. In December 2005, Egypt began cracking down on African migrants, in one infamous incident many (between 10 and 60) were massacred by police attempting to clear a park of their encampments. This helped provide incentive to travel further afield, with Europe a tough destination, they trickled into Sinai and thence to Israel.
(…)
Today Sinai has become a human prison, a place of death, gang rape and murder. While initially many of the Africans were refugees it seems now that, as with the sex slave trade in Eastern European women that was a staple of the 1990s in Sinai, the slave trade in Africans in Sinai has become a business – one where victims are recruited and then transported to Israel only as a way to get rid of the human cargo. Israel has decent relations with Egypt’s security forces in Sinai. It is time to send the message that only a massive and coordinated crackdown on the Beduin smugglers will stop the flow of illegal immigrants, help Egypt’s image and end the hell that Sinai has become.

Read and weep. But sure, sure, feel free to continue to discuss stupid people’s facebook pictures.