The Scribbler

Olmert has finally managed to do something right in his role as Prime Minister of the State of Israel -he's announced that he will be resigning as head of the party (and by extension, country) as soon as Kadimah elects a new leader. In his televised speech, he had the chutzpah to complain that the Israelis had become a "nation of grumblers who complain in almost every situation". Grumbers eh? How dare the inhabitants of Sderot complain as they are being shelled continuously whilst their leader does bugger all to sort the problem out? Can you blame the Israelis for "grumbling"? If I had this schmuck running my country, I'd also be pretty pissed off. Goodbye Olmert . Don't bother switching the lights off because we need them to focus on someone who will be both an asset to the State of Israel and the Jewish people - and to be brutally honest, at present those lights are shining pretty damn dimly.

How times change. When I started this blogging business, my family and friends were this close to ordering me to go to therapy, to sort out my "problem". They asked me why I felt the need to share my innermost thoughts with strangers from around the world. They reasoned that it was understandable to "let it out all" by writing a diary, but why, oh why, would I ever want to share my emotions with the virtual universe, that we now call Cyberspace). The blank looks on their faces were something to behold. I patiently explained that this was the way forward and that blogging would become the NBT (Next Big Thing). This was back in 2004 and I don't think that even I could have imagined how successfully it would have taken off. Four years on and my "meshugas" (madness) is viewed as being much less of a worry than it used to be. Look at the Net. These days, you can reads blogs from anyone. Politicians, Rabbis, Doctors, journalists - you name it - post regular...

I've been recently approached by a number of people, anxious to tell me that there was something wrong with my blog, granted that the template had been changed and the text seemed smaller than it used to be. I should have alerted you that yours truly was responsible for the said changes. Simply put, I looked at the blog and felt that it was time for a bit of a spruce up. With this in mind, don't be surprised to see the template changing a number of times over the near future, as I play around with different colour schemes. If you don't like my choice, please tell me - after all, you're the visitors and at the end of the day....the visitor is always right! Now that we've got that out of the way, what do you think of today's choice?

The girls have finally broken up for their summer break and apparently, I've been on a break since Friday. I say "apparently" because I've spent this week in school (bar Monday) marking my Year 10 coursework...and it's still not finished. A few lessons I've learned from my experience. 1) Mark as much as you can during the year. It won't go away and you don't want to spend your summer break in a classroom catching up. 2) Make sure that you've got some decent summer wear. The odd kid that walks into the class won't be that impressed to see their teacher sitting there in tattered shorts. 3) The British summer is not long enough when it comes to catching up with your marking. If I don't watch out, it will be over before you've finished! 4) The novelty of going into a virtually empty school soon wears off. 5) Bring some decent music in, to listen to. Otherwise, you will spend an indeterminable amount of time sitting in silence, marking the s...

There are numerous lessons from history that need to be learned. Firstly, you don't do deals with terrorists. Israel pay note. Secondly, you don't hold talks with homocidal dictators. Hitler was not someone who would be receptive to any sort of communication. He mocked Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" document. If Obama honestly thinks that talking to a maniac like Ahmedinejad will stop him nuking anyone he dislikes, he must either be extraordinarily naive (which I'll give him, granted his lack of experience in the field) or plain stupid (which we know he isn't - so I'll opt for number one) Listen Barack. Listen to history. Listen to the people who know. You are wasting your time suggesting talks with Iran. Ahmadinejad will talk the talk and play the game, but he'll be laughing at you behind your back. Iran is not interested in carrots and sticks. They are hell bent on developing nuclear weapons irrespective of what anyone thinks. It...

It's part of the natural rhythm of life. The world loves crazes. Think about the different dances that our parents and grandparents boogied to - the Charlston, the The Twist, The Mashed Potato or The Locomotion. More recently, we saw the Disco, The Lambada and the Salsa taking over our dance floors. We all loved that craze didn't we? What about the craze for clothes, haircuts (OK, I'm thinking Beatles now, but you get the drift.) Remember the Atkins Diet craze a while back? We all love the latest craze. After all, isn't that what makes life that little bit more interesting and palatable? It becomes the "thing" that everyone talks about for a little while and then it dies away, usually to make room for it's successor. Then, there is the other type of craze - the kind that we don't enjoy. Anyone remember the craze for hijacking aeroplanes? What about the one for suicide bombings? I'm afraid that one is still with us. And now the latest craze - taking...

Whilst I am extraordinarily proud of Israel's moral stance, I fear that the kind of "people" we are dealing with see our noble actions as weakness. In the end, we will be victorious, but at what price?

Jews have marched on and survived for millennia, with a little help from their brains and their humor: The President of Iran is wondering who to invade when his telephone rings. "This is Mozel in Tel Aviv. Ve're officially declaring var on Iran!" "How big is your army?" the president asks. "There's me, my cousin Moishe, and our pinochle team!" "I have a million in my army," snaps the president. "I'll call back!" says Mozel. The next day he calls. "The var's still on! Ve have now a bulldozer, Goldblatt's tractor. Plus the canasta team!" "I have 16,000 tanks and my army is now two million." "Oy Gevalt!" says Mozel. "I'll call back." He phones the next day. "Ve called off the var. " "Why?" "Vell," says Mozel, "we all had a chat, and there's no vay we can feed two million prisoners."

I'm going to say it. In my opinion (and I'm sure I speak for many), Ehud Olmert holds the dubious honour of being Israel's worst leader. His grotesque manhandling of 2006 Lebanon was an unbridled failure (although to be fair, he isn't wholly to blame - the then Chief of Staff is pretty culpable too) which he has managed to equal in the way he ineptly presided over the prisoner swap last week. I fully respect the ideal of doing everything in our power to get our boys back, but why did Olmert agree to do so at the expense of not furthering his one and only chance to find out what happened to Ron Arad? He even admitted that the Hezbollah report was inadequate. So why go ahead with the swap. As far as I have read, the Israeli Government knew that the boys were already dead - although they chose not to share this information with the desparate families. And why was that terrorist Kuntar released when Gilad Schalit is still languishing in the barbaric hands of Hamas? What wi...

Paul McCartney to Play Israel Gig By Adam Nutburn, July 17 2008 Sir Paul McCartney is set to make history -- by playing his first gig in Israel. The Beatles were banned from the country more than 40 years ago, after being turned away by its then education minister David Zarzevski, who believed a gig by the band would corrupt the country's morals. However earlier this year, Israel's government sent apology letters the band's remaining members -- Sir Paul and drummer Ringo Starr -- as well as the relatives of deceased Beatles George Harrison and John Lennon -- inviting them to play as part of the country's 60th birthday celebrations. The letters stated, "We should like to take this opportunity to correct the historic omission which to our great regret occurred in 1965 when you were invited to Israel. "We missed a chance to learn from the most influential musicians of the decade." McCartney, 66, is now said to be on the verge of signing a deal to play to 25...

They get 5 live terrorists (including 1 who killed two a father and his daughter and was responsible for the girl's mother asphyxiating the other daughter). We get 2 dead soldiers and some very suspect information on the whereabouts of one other. This is mathematics according the Middle Eastern rules. So why is it, that for us, the Jews, the numbers don't really add up? Why is it that we have to receive death for life? Why is it that we feel so much more pain than they feel happiness? Why do our boys' lives mean so much more to them than their brothers' captivity? When their fervour is over, our desparation will still be engraved inside our hearts. For us, the maths have always meant so much more than simply numbers and that's why this evening, although I grieve, I thank G-d that I was born a member of such an amazing nation. In the end. we will prevail, even when 2 + 2 = 0.

The hollow eyes and lipstick. The spiky hair and shallow complexion. This can mean one thing and one thing only...it's the annual school talent show and guess what I went on stage as? That's right my friends. A zombie. But not any old zombie - a zombie doing the Thriller dance, along with five other zombified members of staff. I don't know what possessed me to start doing a zombie dance in front of most of the kids and teachers (and Lord knows how I'm ever going to live that one down), but I've been practicing for the last fortnight. Dancing the lunch breaks away, turning up to afternoon lessons hot, bothered and aching - what more does one need to do to prove total dedication to one's place of work?! It was a lot of fun and although I didn't quite master all of the steps, I don't think I did too badly either. The most important thing was that everyone had a good time - and not just from watching our act (which was the final offering in front of the ...

I've returned from another visit to my beloved city. I first set foot in Liverpool on Friday 22 nd February 1985 (ironically the day on which Dana had been born but fourteen years previously...and Tali wasn't even a twinklet ). I don't remember much of the trip, except for the visit to the Beatle City exhibition (on Sunday the 24 th ), which is long gone. I have a vague memory of walking around Seel Street and seeing the docks....and that's about it. When I bought my first Beatles' tape at Oliver Crombie , a music shop in Golders Green the next day, I really didn't realise that I was on the cusp on developing one of my life's great passions. The tape, by the way, was Please Please Me . Fast forward 23 years and then some... and I've come back from my fourth visit to the city - my third annual trip. To be fair, this wasn't exactly a Beatles event. As you know, I was here on business, although the lads were never far away from either my mind, or t...

I don't know how I managed to wrangle it, but I'm off to Liverpool again tomorrow for a two day trip. My excuse this time (like I need one, eh?) is that I'm accompanying a group of Year 10's, who are taking part in a contest. Ironically, I/we will be staying in the heart of the Jewish area of Childwall, but I don't think I'm going to get much of a chance to meet up with the community this time around. I honestly don't care! It was an excuse to return to my beloved Liverpool once again and I wasn't about to miss the chance. Then again, maybe I'm being a touch greedy as I will be going up again next month, accompanied by my mother and the two eldest girls. Come to think of it, I was only about 60 miles from my destination last Thursday. It was tempting to go up (not that I really considered it), granted that I knew I'd be driving around the same roads in less than a week. It's funny how I've suddenly developed into a long distance driver (...

by Rochelle Eissenstat On Wed. July 2, 2008, an Arab started trying to kill people on a very packed busy street in Jerusalem with his work vehicle, a caterpillar type of huge bulldozer. He just drove it onto the adjacent packed street and started trying to crush cars. One of the first cars he attacked was ours. In our car were my husband in the front passenger seat, me the driver, and 3 of our girls in the back; we were on our way to meet visiting friends. As we drove toward the place, we were on the packed street called Sarei Yisrael, when suddenly, several workmen suddenly ran into the street gesturing vehemently that we should clear out. This was really impossible with the very packed traffic! And anyway, just behind them came a huge bulldozer at an impossible-seeming speed. In the first seconds as he bashed into a car to the left of us, it was not entirely clear whether the vehicle or driver was out of control. But then after flattening car #1, he crushed a second car next t...

On the day I drove up to Telford , I heard the horrific news about what had happened in Jerusalem that morning. Knowing the route that the Jaffa Road takes, as it winds its way through the heart of downtown Jerusalem, I could visualise the location where the events had taken place. Obviously, at the time, details of what had happened were still sketchy and the names of the victims, particularly, the young mother who had saved her six month old baby, within seconds of losing her life, were unknown. That said, I couldn't shake the image from my mind. A few days later, I found out that the mother, Batsheva Unterman was married to a guy I went to school with in London. I don't know whether I feel any worse being in possession of that knowledge. Does it make me feel more angry, more frustrated, more tearful knowing that one of my contemporaries , someone whom I remember from school, is having to cope with such an unimaginable situation? The emotions run wild. What if my wife had b...

One of the more interesting aspects of my job that I hadn't anticipated when I signed up was the notion of travelling. I mean, who would think that something as sedentary as teaching, where in effect, your classroom is your office, could send you on adventures in places you'd never thought of visiting, let alone finding yourself there. Last year, as you may recall, I travelled with the Year 7s to Disneyland Paris. It was an unforgettable trip (probably because it was my first) and I didn't think I'd be off again so soon. My Head of Department approached me on Tuesday, asking if I could go to Telford, to undertake some training for the ever changing sixth form curriculum. I didn't think twice and so, on Wednesday night, I made my way up the M1 and M6 to Telford, a little town in the north west of England, whose reputation is mainly derived from being the location of the world's very first iron bridge. It is also the site of the very interesting and quite unique T...

Paul McCartney is no longer a threat to Israeli youth. by Nathan Burstein More than four decades after the Beatle and his famous band mates were told they couldn’t perform in Israel for fear that they would corrupt the country’s young people, the “Let It Be” singer has signed on for a September concert in either Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan. The big-budget show, first reported by Yediot Aharonot, will follow McCartney concerts in Georgia and Turkey. The show, likely to be the largest and most expensive of the summer, is being organized by David Zarzevski, a promoter behind the Eilat Jazz Festival and recent Tel Aviv-area concerts by Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu. The show will mark McCartney’s debut concert in Israel, though not his first invitation to perform. The singer and his Beatles counterparts planned a concert in the country in 1965, but they were barred from performing by then-education minister Yaakov Schneider on grounds that the band members might serve as negative role models for ...

By Amiram Barkat LONDON (Jewish Telegraph Agency) -- With a pair of massive rallies for Israel held simultaneously in London's Trafalgar Square and Manchester's Heaton Park on Sunday, British Jewry may be signaling that its transformation is at hand. Some 30,000 participants attended the public shows of support for Israel, which were inspired by New York’s annual Salute-to-Israel parade. Several thousand people waving Israeli and British flags marched from the Ritz Hotel to Trafalgar Square followed by dozens of carnival floats, cyclists, dancers and bands. At Trafalgar Square, an Israeli Cabinet minister, Britain’s secretary of state for Education and Britain's chief rabbi all addressed the crowd. Israeli musicians performed between the speeches. "I'm sure that my father, who served here as an officer in the Britishrmy, couldn't have imagined that some day tens of thousands of Jews would be waving Israeli flags here in Trafalgar Square," said Israel’s mi...

I've found this fabulous new website called Seeqpod which allows you to create an online playlist from any MP3 on the web. You can add as many songs as you like and they are streamed through. I've embedded a player in the left hand column (just above the Israeli flag), so if you want to suffer my mix of songs, feel free to play them whilst you visit. I've configured the player to play the songs upon request, so I really don't mind if you prefer to, ahem, avoid my choices! I will be adding more tracks as and when, so keep checking (if that's your thing).