The Last Exile

I came home last Friday to discover Revenue Canada wants me to clarify two things – my martial status and the custody arrangements for my two minor children. Set aside there has been no immediate change in my martial status for the last 9 years and I do not actually have any legal documents saying I have custody of my teenagers since one does not usually end up in family court suing for legal custody of children from a dead spouse. I suppose Revenue Canada is scrapping the bottom of the shakedown barrel or someone has far too much time and imagination to ever be allowed to work in any government department.

Of all the tens of thousands of legal papers floating around my home that I have acquired in a life time of living I have discovered that I cannot find the one paper I actually need – my husband’s death certificate. This requires I contact the Jamaican government and deal with the bureaucracy. If I said I would rather have extension dental surgery spread out quarterly over the next ten years rather than deal with the Jamaican bureaucracy would you believe I am actually understating the actual amount of dread and loathing I am feeling. Revenue Canada and the Jamaican bureaucracy – its a twofer or double whammy of misery. I must have really been evil in a past life.

One the plus side, the everything is now online but I simply cannot input my deceased husband’s name, dob, date and place of death. I need to obtain a death registry number before a copy of the death certificate can be purchased and sent. Of course, a copy of the death certificate still requires all the information above to ensure it matches the deceased. There are so many possibilities for error that my typing fingers are shrivelling just thinking about it. The forced expedition through my documents made me search in places I never willingly go – like the box holding all my husband’s papers, pictures and letters. This set off a trip to the attic of my mind and some of the lids of the boxes there aren’t very battered down all that well.

The Last Amazon in an effort to divert me asked me a question she found in her latest copy of Glamour magazine which forced me to open all the boxes in search of an answer because she really wanted to know. In fact, she feels I have a responsibility to answer her because she is my daughter. Simply put; what advice would I give her someone her age about love. I just didn’t know…I could give her dating advice, marriage advice, career advice, health advice but love…I was stumped. I am living in the attic, and directly front and center, are two huge opened boxes. One is marked Colleen and right beside is an older more tattered box called whose name written in the dust is Clay. It was among the first the boxes to go on my shelves of sorrows. It was a box of great joy and even bigger grief.

I was 21 and had never fallen in love till I meet Clay. By 21, I had loved, married and buried one husband but I never had fallen in love. I was raised by ruthlessly pragmatic people whose idea of ‘falling-in-love’ was as alien a suggestion as the idea that the Martians have landed and are in control of the White House.

I had met him strictly by accident when my beloved friend Colleen and I had to plan my escape from home as I had just broke off an engagement rather suddenly with a man my family wanted me to marry. I didn’t want to listen or be forced to participate in the drama. Instead, we drove off in her battered Ford Escort and headed towards the border so I wouldn’t have to chance being hunted down by relatives who might try to force their point of view on me. My grandmother’s last words to me as we drove off was ‘For fuck’s sake don’t pick-up or start anything with any man and remember you aren’t the fucking UN’. Colleen turned bright red in embarrassment for hearing an entirely respectable looking senior woman, dressed in fur and diamonds, swearing and suggesting in public – for the entire neighborhood to over hear – that we might be inclined to pick-up with strange men. Colleen’s obvious embarrassment only made me laugh all the harder and showed very clearly who might be the older sister but it didn’t mean she was the more experienced one. But then again, she didn’t have all of my obvious advantages having been raised by Gypsies. In my grandmother’s world, this was the equivalent of saying ‘good-bye, have a safe trip and I love you’ were in Colleen’s world as we hit the nevo drom – the high road.

We ended up in Buffalo, New York, where the booze was cheap, men were easy and the music went on till the early hours of the morning. This meant she could easily find someone to entertain her while I danced all night. We went to a half a dozen clubs that night but I couldn’t find my groove. Eventually, the man who joined my friend suggested we hit the East side and go to the Cotton Club. The guys at the door had no trouble letting me and Colleen in but her friend was too pale to pass the colour bar despite my best efforts. I cursed not opening the debate without my French accent. Although, one of the bouncer’s did suggested we try a club down the street called Etc.

This time I told the other two to walk behind and let me clear the door first. It worked too. Unknown to me, I was about to meet the man who would change my life forever. In fact, long after we were over I spent a good ten years searching for echoes of him in every man I ever met. Nothing had prepared me for meeting him. I never had school girl crushes on movie or rock stars or the boy next door. I was raised by people who believed ‘falling-in-love’ was only something the gagje movie stars did on the silver screen to fleece the gullible of their cash. Love was family, duty; the kampania.

I was married off and buried my first husband by the time I met Clay but I never fell in love. And who falls madly, careless, recklessly in love in the east side of Buffalo, New York? Apparently, I do, which all suggests one cannot ever know what lies just down the highway and over the bridge. It went on for years. In my naivete, I had only honesty and my famed bluntness to guide me. Tolerance, patience and forgiveness were foreign in my experience and I wouldn’t learn their value until I had children. The last time I saw him was in the late 80’s as I turned to back look at him just one last time as he lay sleeping in bed before I sneaked out the door like a thief in the night and out of his world forever – without explanation. It was last reconciliations of what feels like thousands of reunions. I remember laying in bed beside him and thought I just cannot live a life filed with anger – his, mine, and the world’s. I gathered up my clothes and slide on the door. It would take years before the sight of people like us wouldn’t enrage strangers in on the street and provoke anger.

So I was thinking about love and what advice I could give my daughter and I just couldn’t come up with a single piece of wisdom. I stared at the computer and the blank screen and suddenly I had the urge to look him up and see if he was on Facebook. He was there and very much as I remembered him. I spent a long time debating whether I would send him a message or not – my own personal Pandora’s box. In the end, the young woman who had to play with fire just because she had held the matches in her hand asserted her presence and I did.

I just spent hours talking to a man who I have spent the last 28 years separate and apart from. Its eerie how we so easily fell so easily into our Kate and Clay mould which was forged so long ago. It’s amazing how comforting it is to learn he is still alive and finding happiness. There was a time when we would break up and he’d call me in the middle of the time and say to me – ‘Kate please just talk to me…I just need to hear the sound of your voice.’ I knew things were ‘wrong’ and I wouldn’t fight him but do as he asked. There were times when I did the very same and he wouldn’t fight me. We just knew what each of us needed and we gave it despite all the bad blood that passed between us and our own inability to raise above our petty natures.

He sent me a message today which said he has been searching for me for years and he have never stopped thinking about you. I still have your earrings and I hope you have been happy. You have to call me.

So I did and spent hours lost in the surreal place where the past and the present converge.

Eventually, we talked about the first time we were intimate. I think it was so different for me from all the men I had been with before because it was the first time I let myself carried away and utterly lost in a moment. I approached it as entirely a one-off kind of thing which turned into an experience spread out of years. It was a moment that I wanted to feel forever in. I think the desire started the first time he took me in his arm to dance. Being a dancer I tended to relate to people first by the way their moved or carried their bodies. He just fit me. His body ‘got’ me and mine answered. The first time I danced with him brought out an entirely physical and emotional response in me.

We talked about that first time. He remembered as clearly as I as it left a profound mark on both of us. I think it was so different (at least for me) as it was the first time I let myself get absolutely carried away in the moment.  I thought of it as entirely a one-off kind of thing and nothing mattered more than that moment. A moment that I wanted to feel forever in. I made a promise to myself that if we ever got together then all the rules which govern relationships were off the table for just so I could fully experience and explore this strange attraction I felt for him. Well, all the rules but one – I would do anything as long as it felt good. All my famous walls and inhibitions were entirely down just for one night. I threw my entire focus into just enjoying him for the pleasure we’d give each other….just like I use to do when I would go on stage to dance – to live. I wanted to live forever in that moment and I, we, did.

There were other moments in that long first fall and winter. He had a living room wall lined by mirrors and he would lie down between my legs as I was dressed in nothing but my toe shoes as I practiced my ballet barre while he lay under the ground between my feet. I cannot begin to explain how incredibly the experience was…to be loved utterly loved and appreciated for merely being a woman. Heedy stuff.

I haven’t a clue as to what it all means. I am a fortunate woman, I have been loved many times – probably much more than I have deserved. Men have written stories for and about me – painted my portrait and I have more than my share of bad poetry and songs written for me.

In turn,  I have loved my share of men but I never loved anyone like I loved him. I am not even sure that I ever wanted to love anyone like I loved him.  It was both sacred and profane. The experience of knowing him marked me forever and I spent a good ten years of searching for the Clay in all the men I met and never finding him. Eventually, I learned not to look and found other things – sometimes wonderful things.

I have no love advice to give anyone except for this – if you are ever fortunate to experience love do not be afraid but approach love as a prayer, and pray you get to dance to the end of love.

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.

There is far too much drama going on around me which has resulted in a number of unintended consequences. I have had little sleep or ‘alone’ time. This situation has resulted in my leaving my home inadequately caffeinated and unable to cope with the world at large in a civilized manner. Case in point – This morning I got off the bus and was patiently waiting for the light to change so I could cross the street. I would have been okay except the couple standing immediately to my left were making strange annoying noises in my ear. In my inadequately caffeinated state, the intrusive noise caused my tolerance level to sink to psycho and I hollered at them to STFU. I rarely swear, let alone swear at strangers on the street. So I now need to offer a general apology to the deaf couple who were signing on the corner of Bloor Street East & Sherbourne this morning for my boorish and uncivilized behaviour.

Israeli customer service has had a reputation which has always bordered on…shall I say legendary? Ha’aretz:

A customer who decided to leave cellular services provider Partner has received a bill addressed to “Mr. Stupid Person,” so he is suing Partner for NIS 50,000 for defamation. The customer, Samir Samchayev, had a number of phones from Partner and decided to cancel his father’s line after he suffered a spate of technical and other problems. Samchayev said Partner’s customer service reps who tried to convince him to stay used his bill to insult him and take revenge. Samchayev said it was clear this was not a misprint as his details on Partner’s Web site also called him Mr. Stupid Person.
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Okay, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea from a customer service standpoint, but really now, who hasn’t had a job dealing with the general public who hasn’t run into Mr. Stupid Person and wanted to call him that?

Not much attention has been paid to the crisis in Russia in recent weeks in the main street media other than passing mention here and there – but things are very dire.
Here’s an op-ed piece describing what all those who haven’t fled Moscow have been living through from the Moscow Times:

The biggest event of the past two weeks is the fires raging across large swaths of Russia. In Moscow, toxic smog from peat bog fires seeped through shut windows in apartments and offices — regardless of how powerfully your air conditioner was working. The smog made the Moscow that I have known so well since my childhood unrecognizable. Where were the chirps of birds and shouts of children? It seemed that both had evacuated the city, or perhaps their sounds were simply muffled by the thick pall of smoke.

And about those fires – where would Russia be without the volunteers?

Konstantin together with eight other professional firefighters arrived from the Tula region to Yuvino, a village of 80 houses surrounded by the pine forests of the Meshchersky National Park. The firefighters, who have experience extinguishing flaming buildings, do not normally work in forests. The night before, a 40-meter-high wall of fire nearly engulfed Yuvino, together with the firefighters and several residents who chose not to evacuate, they recalled. They were saved by a fortunate change in wind direction.

Many weeks with no rain have left the naturally moist forest bone-dry. Stepping on what was once moss turns it into dust. A mere spark ignites the biomass like gunpowder. “It’s not a forest; it’s a disaster!” said Sergei, a lieutenant colonel in charge of the firefighters in Yuvino. Sergei and other professional firefighters interviewed for this story spoke on condition that their last names be withheld, citing fears of a conflict with their superiors. While some did not want to be seen criticizing the authorities, one firefighter, bare-chested and wearing charcoal-stained pants, said he just did not want to get into trouble for not donning his firefighting uniform. “It’s too hot,” he said.

With two firetrucks at Sergei’s disposal, he has no pump to fill them up. He also lacks tents, so the firefighters have to sleep on the ground or on top of the trucks, covering up with their jackets. The bulky trucks cannot drive close to the forest fire, and the two fire hoses do not reach far enough into the forest from the road. With power lines to Yuvino toppled by falling trees, the firefighters were cut off from the outside world for some time after their cell phone batteries died. Volunteers later provided a generator.

Volunteers, widely snubbed by professional firefighters because of their lack of experience, have saved several villages by using basic shovels and buckets of water and sand. Even after a larger fire is suppressed with a fire hose, the underbrush often continues to burn, and a gust of wind can ignite it into a blaze once again. Using shovels and water backpacks, volunteers in Yuvino isolated burning groundcover, cleared a fire line around the village, and loaned firefighters a pump to fill their trucks.

“When the fires just started, everybody thought of helping the victims. Nobody thought that the firefighters needed help because it is common knowledge that a firefighter arrives at the scene on a firetruck with a fire pump and fully equipped,” said Igor Chersky, a radio host and LiveJournal blogger whose blog has become a coordination center of sorts for volunteers.
“But after a few trips were made to deliver donations, it became clear that the firefighters had nothing but a few rusty trucks, not even food,” he said. “That changed our whole approach. Now the Internet is full of requests for fire hoses and other equipment.”

Supply and demand is coordinated through a few charity organizations and a LiveJournal community called pozar_ru, which is filled with urgent calls for help and drivers offering to deliver supplies as far from Moscow as the Voronezh region.

By Monday, almost 18 million rubles ($590,000), along with about 200 tons of goods, had been donated to the Synodal department of the Russian Orthodox Church, which oversees charity collection and whose church on Nikoloyamskaya Ulitsa in Moscow has become the city’s largest coordination center for donations and volunteers. Some of the money has already been used to buy fire hoses, face masks, pumps and fire extinguishers, it said on its web site, Miloserdie.ru.

Apparently, the Russian climate isn’t the only thing feeling the heat according to this Singapore Strait Times report:

MOSCOW – RUSSIA’S record temperatures and wildfires have shown the authorities retain a Soviet-style reluctance to admit bad news, be it over a potential radiation risk in forests or the death toll from the heatwave.

It was after the USSR’s worst environmental disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant that the Soviet Union imposed its most notorious information blackout, only admitting the calamity had taken place after over two days.The 2010 wildfires have seen the authorities only acknowledge that military logistics facilities burned down or that nuclear sites were close to the wildfires sometimes days after the event. The latest controversy surrounds the website of a forest protection agency linked to the ministry of agriculture which has been blocked since Friday after it revealed fires had burned in areas contaminated by Chernobyl.

The statement by Roslesozashchita sparked worries that radioactive particles from the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the soil of the Bryansk region of western Russia could be released into the air by the fires and pose a health risk. The emergencies ministry had denied that there were any fires in the area.

The Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu had said the site should be ’sorted out’ for publishing ‘false information’. ‘It is censorship. The authorities must inform the population, the fire brigade and volunteers on eventual radioactive danger and take measures for protection,’ Vladimir Slivyak, head of the Eco-Defence group, told AFP. ‘The whole world could see from satellite photos that there were fires in the Bryansk region.’

Years ago there was quite a popular book making the rounds of pop culture which was based on the premise that everything which was necessary for the socialization process was learned in kindergarten. Obviously, the premise is simplistic and trite but I do believe there are individuals who never grow out of behaviour patterns which are set early in life.

I had three children in under four years, so between the oldest and the youngest there is merely three years gap between the oldest and youngest child. One of the things that surprised me the most was the truly competitive nature each of my children and how it coloured their perceptions of each other from the get-go. Not just in the obvious ways at home, in sports or at school but it was an all pervasive game of perpetual one-up-manship. Each child instinctively saw ‘the other’ sibling as out to get them.

If my daughter tripped or stumbled while walking close to one of her brothers she immediately blamed one which ever one of the boys she held a grudge against at that given moment for causing her to stumble or trip. In fact, on many occasions I had to point out the ‘other siblings’ weren’t even within the immediate vicinity of where she was when the accident occurred. Eventually, with time, maturity and logic I was able to win everyone over to the idea – that some accidents or injury can be isolated and random and can occur without a human motivational trigger.

I do believe that some people never learn fully grasp this concept which brings me to the case of Emily Henochowicz. Her name is probably completely unknown to most of my readers or most North Americans but she has become a potent poster-girl symbol to the International Solidarity Movement and like-wise sojourners. Ha’aretz tells the story rather well even if the full article is deeply biased.

The Israeli government is refusing to pay the cost of medical care for an American-Jewish activist who lost an eye when Border Police officers fired a tear gas canister at her during a demonstration. Emily Henochowicz, who studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and also holds Israeli citizenship, took part in a protest on May 31, shortly after Israel killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

Dozens of activists took part in the protest against the Israeli blockade of Gaza next to the Qalandia checkpoint, south of Ramallah. According to the IDF, demonstrators began to throw stones at the Border Police, after which the army responded by firing tear gas canisters.

According to Henochowicz, one policeman shot a canister directly at her face, shattering her jaw and causing her to lose her left eye. A Haaretz reporter witnessed the incident. Following her her treatment at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Henochowicz’s father, who had traveled from the U.S., was handed a bill for NIS 14,000. Under advice from his lawyer, Michael Sfard, he asked the Defense Ministry cover the expense, but officials refused.

In justifying the refusal, the Defense Ministry claimed the tear gas was not fired directly at Henochowicz. “The canister ricocheted at her after it rebound off a concrete barrier and changed direction – it was not shot directly at her,” the ministry said in a statement drafted by lawyer Sharon Zimmerman. The statement also accused Henochowicz of putting herself at risk by voluntarily participating in a breach of the peace.

Now in Henochowicz’s world, the Israel security forces represent the ultimate in evil inclinations and she a moral duty to confront what she perceives as the injustice behind checkpoints used against her chosen people; the Palestinians.

Unlike others, I won’t ascribe Henochowicz’s beliefs as ‘deliberate lies’ but a failure of perspective. The fact she was peacefully participating in a demonstration which turned violent against the Israeli security forces is what led directly to her being accidentally injured cannot be a random event according to her lexicon of beliefs. The attack had to be deliberate and personal because the forces of ‘evil’ were involved rather than the far more logical and rational conclusion; which was her injury resulted by at the wrong place at the wrong time. Think I am wrong? Well there is always the CCTV footage of the event.

Although, I do understand where Henochowicz gets it from as her father appears to suffer from the same inadequacies of maturity which just proves that social dysfunction is just not a generational thing.

There is something different about the Lebanese which makes them unique in the Middle East. For example, when the Minister of Defense for Lebanon learned the US congress had put a hold on military aid to the Lebanese Army he didn’t cry blame the Joos like everyone else in the neighborhood would do. Instead, he did the Lebanese equivalent of ‘take this job and shove it. Al-Jazeera

The Lebanese defence minister has said that the country will refuse military assistance from the US should any aid come with conditions that weapons not be used against Israel. The comments from Elias Murr were made on Wednesday, after it was revealed that $100 million in US military assistance to Lebanon had been suspended last week.

Aid was halted due to fears that Hezbollah, the Shia group backed by Iran, would manage to get hold of any arsenal provided. Concern was raised that Hezbollah holds influence over the Lebanese military and that the weapons could be used against Israel. “If someone would like to help the army without restrictions or conditions, he is welcome,” Murr said. “But those who want to help the army on condition that it doesn’t protect its territory, people and border from Israel, should keep their money - or give it to Israel instead,” Murr said. “We will confront [Israel] with the capabilities that we have.”

And then the Defense Minister opened up a bank account for private donations for the army. Zawya

BEIRUT, Aug 14, 2010 (AFP) – Lebanon has opened a bank account for donations to help modernise its poorly-equipped army, the defence minister said Saturday, two weeks after a deadly border clash between Lebanese and Israeli soldiers.

“I announce the launching of a fund to support and equip the army,” the official news agency NNA quoted Elias Murr as saying. It said the minister and his father, former defence minister Michel Murr, had deposited one billion Lebanese pounds (670,000 dollars) into an account at the central bank. Murr added that there would be a plan to communicate with the Lebanese diaspora about supporting the fund.

I wish Murr all the luck, although he might think about taking possession of Hezbollah’s arsenal before the fund rising drives starts. But there are a few things which Murr is reported to have said via Al-Jazeera which makes me go uhmmm. Now the prevailing ethos in Lebanon maintains that the Americans were re-examining military aid to Lebanon in light of the border skirmish and the rather disproportionate Lebanese response to tree trimming on the Israeli side of the border. This would be all very well and good except the Americans actually suspended aid August 2nd – two days before the border skirmish. Al Jazeera

Howard Berman, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Monday that he had suspended assistance to Lebanon on August 2 amid growing concern in Congress. A day after the decision, fighting on the Lebanese-Israel border led to the death of two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and an Israeli officer. Berman, a strong supporter of Israel, said that the incident reaffirmed the concerns of Congress. Berman had used his legislative prerogative to place a suspension on the money. It remains to be seen how long the suspension will last.

and apparently Murr had this to say:

Murr said on Wednesday that the Lebanese soldier who fired at Israeli forces during the border unrest was acting on orders.

What makes this interesting is that it certainly puts a different light on the whole Lebanese commander running amuck theory we have heard so much about. If US military aid was suspended on the 2nd, and we are presuming the Lebanese government knew about it shortly thereafter, and then Lebanese initiate and stage a border skirmish on the 3rd…it does lend itself to the appearance that the matter might just have been staged to ’shakedown’ the Americans.

Shirza Herzog has what passes for a prominent name in Israeli politics but for the life of me I cannot recall one article or position she has taken via the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where she has been right. I really tuned out big time as she tried to pass off Sharon’s disengagement as the best thing since sliced bread rather than a disaster of biblical proportions in the making for both the Israelis and Palestinians.

But she does bring up an an important topic which is being discussed seriously by both the Israeli and Palestinian body politic. Probably much more seriously in the Palestinian side than the Israeli – possibly because the so-called intelligentsia in Israel are leftwardly bent – even the so-called centralists bend from the left, and most of the opposition to the idea of a one state solution to the conflict comes from the Israeli left rather than the right. The Globe and Mail,

New winds seem to be blowing in Israel’s right wing. Prominent voices opposed to relinquishing the West Bank and Jewish settlements are calling instead for its annexation, with citizenship for Palestinians living there. On the face of it, this sounds virtuously democratic. But the right has no intention of abandoning its vision of a Jewish state in expanded territory. What’s being proposed is neither practical nor intellectually honest.

Israel’s 7.5 million residents already include nearly one million Palestinian citizens. Palestinian numbers are debated, but incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem would mean the addition of close to three million more and a narrower Jewish majority. Israeli support for a two-state resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians is largely based on this demographic imperative. If Israel wants to remain a democracy, maintain a Jewish majority and be a homeland for the Jewish people, it can’t possibly become a single binational state. (This underpins the reluctance of all Israeli governments to annex territories captured in 1967.)

In spite of this, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, former Likud defence minister Moshe Arens and former Settlers’ Council chair Uri Elizur believe that evacuating settlements and an unstable Palestinian state alongside Israel are worse than the risk of incorporating an even larger Palestinian minority in a Jewish state. The Israeli right has espoused annexation since 1967 but wouldn’t face up to its underlying weakness – the demographic issue and its impact on Israel’s democracy.

Ah, the demographic bogey-man. That argument was considered compelling during the re-birth pangs of the Jewish state, but in 2010, there is simply no place except for it in the modern state of Israel. I won’t even bring up the charge intellectually dishonest charge – cause I cannot do it without a great deal of name calling, but ironically, the largest block against a single state solution comes from a marriage of the Israeli left and the official Palestinian leadership. C’est surprise – not.

Yoram Ettinger takes on the demographic bogeyman in Ynet News, an Israeli daily.

In 2010, a surge in the Israeli Jewish fertility rate is a long-term, unique, global phenomenon, while fertility rates decline sharply in the Third World in general and in Muslim countries in particular.

In 2010, there is a 66% Jewish majority in 98.5% of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (without Gaza) – and a 58% Jewish majority with Gaza. That Jewish majority benefits from a demographic tailwind and from a high potential of aliyah (Jewish immigration) and of returning Israeli expatriates.

In comparison, in 1900 and 1947 there was an 8% and a 33% Jewish minority, deprived of economic, technological and military infrastructures. In 2010, the number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is inflated by 900,000 (1.6 million and not 2.5 million) through the inclusion of 400,000 overseas residents, a double-count of 200,000 Jerusalem Arabs (who are counted as Israeli Arabs by Israel and as West Bank Arabs by the Palestinian Authority), and by ignoring annual net-emigration since 1950 (e.g. 17,000 in 2009), etc. Meanwhile, a World Bank study documents a 32% “inflation” in Palestinian birth numbers.

Since the appearance of modern-day Zionism, the demographic establishment has contended that Jews are doomed to be a minority west of the Jordan River. It asserts that Jews must relinquish geography in order to secure demography. But, what if demographic fatalism is based on dramatically erroneous assumptions and numbers? What if the demographic establishment has adopted Palestinian numbers without auditing, although such numbers are refuted annually by an examination of birth, death, migration and 1st grade registration records?

What if the contended Palestinian numbers require a population growth rate almost double the highest population growth rate in the world, while Gaza and Judea and Samaria are ranked 5th and 38th in global population growth rate? What if the demographic establishment failed to realize that the Arab demographic surge of 1949-1969 (in pre-1967 Israel) and 1967-1990 (in Judea and Samaria and Gaza) had to be succeeded by a sharp demographic decline?

Contrary to demographic projections, the first half of 2010 sustains the growth of the Jewish fertility rate and the sharp and rapid fall of the Arab fertility rate throughout the Muslim World, as well as west of the Jordan River. The decline in Arab fertility results from accelerated urbanization and modernization processes, such as education, health, employment, family planning, reduced teen pregnancy, enhanced career mentality among women, in addition to domestic security concerns.

The Washington-based Population Resource Center reported a sharp dive in global Muslim fertility, trending toward two births per woman. For instance, Iran shrunk from 8 births 30 years ago to 1.7, Egypt – 2.5, North Africa – 1.9, Jordan – a “twin sister” of Judea and Samaria – is below 3 births per woman and Judea and Samaria’s fertility rate is 3.2 in 2010. According to demographic precedents, there is a very slight probability of resurrecting high fertility rates following a prolonged period of significant reduction.

In contrast with demographic fatalism, the share of Jewish births in pre-1967 Israel has increased in 2010 – mostly due to the secular sector – to 76% of total births, compared with 75% in 2009 and 69% in 1995. From 80,400 births in 1995 the number of Jewish births catapulted by 50% to 121,000 in 2009, while the annual number of Arab births has stabilized at 39,000 due to their most impressive integration into Israel’s infrastructures of modernity.

The fertility gap between Arabs (3.5 births per woman and trending downward) and Jews (2.9 and trending upward) was reduced from 6 birth per woman in 1969 to 0.6 in 2009. The erosion in the Arab fertility rate is 20 years faster than projections made by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

Okay, that’s the elites duking it out, but what of those gun-crazed settlers roaming around Samaria and Judea? Joe Settler has this to say.

I’ll admit, certainly if you keep the Palestinian state of Hamastan (Gaza) out of the picture, it does have some points of merit.

Israel still remains a Jewish democratic state because we’re still the majority, and probably will continue to be so (and even with Gaza we still would have a Jewish majority). Israel annexes the whole of Judea and Samaria and gradually and carefully naturalizes the Arab population. It certainly diffuses the absurd claims that the Palestinians don’t have democratic representation (though I will admit that since the PA hasn’t had elections for a while, and the term of their Prime Minister expired over a year ago, there is something to that claim, but they’re just blaming the wrong people for that problem). The US trained PA military can be incorporated into the Police, where they’ll get along fine. And finally, everyone can live and build where they want (I can just see Tel Aviv getting flooded with West Bankers, and I would certainly start my expansion). Jerusalem wouldn’t need to be divided according to anybody, and the path of the light rail wouldn’t need to be changed. And finally, we can tear down that ugly wall heading towards the middle of my house.

After all, if we can all shop and work in Rami Levi together, a single state isn’t such a impossible idea.

Joe has a valid point – it isn’t an impossible idea and its time to seriously explore the idea rather than the knee-jerk no way, no how, response from the Israeli left. As for the demographics, if Jews in the homeland of the Jewish state can’t care enough to keep the mitzvot – specifically be fruitful and multiply; is there any reason for Israel to remain the homeland of Jews who don’t exist? Really people; what is the point?

Now there are a rather large number of practical hurdles which would have to be broached in any discussion of a one-state solution – none the less would be the Palestinian Authority and what passes for the political leadership of the Palestinians would be obviously dead set against the idea.

The red-line in the sand for the Israelis would be Hamastan in the south and 4 million+ Palestinians disbursed throughout the Arab world, but given, even if a Palestinian state would be established no one would be returning any time soon due to the one practical reality, which is, a Palestinian state could not adsorb an influx of 4 million people. The water resources and infrastructure would make it a human catastrophe in less than 6 months. Oh, did I mention Israel already has two official languages – Hebrew and Arabic – already?

Officer Bubbles makes an appearance at the announcement of the G20 civil lawsuits but he keeps a ‘low profile’ this time.

I really think the taxpayer’s ought to start looking very closely at the idea of garnishing the pay of all officers involved in the civil rights violations given that any payout (not to mention the cost for the government to defend the indefensible in court) will have to come out of out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

It just seems to me when we let the authorities get a free ride on the cost of civil rights violations we enabling the very kind of behaviour we not only scorn in a free society but actively legislate against.

And just because bullies make me feel particularly meanspirited I present Officer Bubbles – the cartoon.

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah had his press conference today to present the evidence that it was the Israelis who were responsible for the assassination of PM Rafik Hariri He promised to provide ‘definitive’ proof of Israeli involvement and instead what he provided was proof of Israeli air reconnaissance over Lebanon.

Really – he did. Actually, there was no evidence provided that the actual photographs were taken by the Israelis but Nasrallah’s word. I can’t stop my eyerolling – so instead read the Lebanon Daily Star’s recap:

Nasrallah disclosed that in 1997, the resistance intercepted Israeli transmissions from its aerial reconnaissance aircraft, and he aired a series of excerpts of this footage, predating Hariri’s February 14, 2005, killing.

The footage was divided into three sections: it covered extensive shots of the area between the St. George Club, where Hariri was killed by a truck bomb, and the late premier’s residence in Qoreitem, with repeated shots of turns in the road along Corniche al-Manara. Nasrallah said the footage indicated that the Israelis were likely studying methods of carrying out bombings and assassinations, since official motorcades slow down at such turns.

The footage included shots of what Nasrallah said was Hariri’s path to his vacation residence in Faqra, Kesrouan, as well as the city of Sidon, with a focus on the residence of his brother, Shafik. “And there are no Hizbullah centers or homes of officials in these areas,” he said.

Nasrallah added that the resistance had begun assembling the footage only in the last two years, from an accumulated store of material, and hadn’t had time to compile similar excerpts of Israeli reconnaissance around the areas frequented by other politicians who were assassinated in the wake of Hariri’s killing. “This isn’t definitive proof,” he said, “but it opens up new horizons for the investigations.” Nasrallah added that the aerial reconnaissance footage was necessarily incomplete, because the resistance was unable to crack some of its encoding. “Just because we don’t have footage of [a given location], doesn’t mean the Israelis didn’t take pictures of it,” he said.

And the Israeli kill kittens too – just ask Nasrallah. If he looks long enough he can probably scrounge around the Hezbollah archives for aerial photographs of kitten deaths and provide testimony from an accused Israeli spy who witnessed it too!

xp: The Last Amazon