The Scribbler

I don't envy Bibi. After Obama's speech, there was very little he could say that would invite the kind of platitudes that his erstwhile but exceedingly naive predecessor garnered on his Cairo outing. That said, I don't think the man did half as badly as many thought he would. I believe that he stepped up to the microphone and delivered a speech that we as a Jewish nation can be justly proud of. Bibi knows that whatever he says, he's going to put himself in the line of the fire. The rightists will never concede an inch of land and ideally speaking, they really shouldn't need to.The real world though says that we don't have much choice, not as long as the occupant of the White House is breathing down our necks waiting for our move. The Palestinians of course rejected his offer of a demilitarized state and came up with the frankly ridiculous argument that we would be sticking them inside a ghetto. If anyone has the slightest knowledge of what constituted a ghetto ...

It breaks my heart. It truly breaks my heart. Yesterday, in Washington DC, an 88 year old pathetic excuse for a human being walked into a museum and shot a guard dead. Let's rephrase that. A white man walked into a building owned by Jews and shot a black man dead. The building housed the Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust is by far the most shocking example of man's inhumanity towards his fellow creature. It represents everything that is reprehensible about human-kind and yet, the ultimate irony is that a white supremacist used this location -this very location, to demonstrate exactly what was so inconceivable, but seventy years ago. Where do we go from here? What have we learned? How, in G- d's name (or lack thereof), can so little have been learned in so much time? The only thing to say, I suppose is that for every piece of homosapien waste that walks the earth, there are (hopefully) many many others humans who use their lives for a more positive purpose. I hope that the e...

Last Monday, my body went past the forty-first and-a-half anniversary of it's first encounter with the external world (why is it that only kids can get away with adding fractions to their age?). I can't say that I noticed much change from the day before. I was too busy teaching kids, preparing lessons, trying to keep my excitable wife and kids calm and so forth. It came and went, pretty much like the previous data, six months afore. Then again, I have marked it because I'm sitting here at 05:39, writing about it nine days later. I was musing (as I often do) about reaching this venerable - or maybe not - age. When I was a kid, I didn't know what I wanted to either do or be. Being Jewish, there is a lot of peer pressure to be successful. All the kids in my class were going to be either very rich, very educated and very rich or simply failures. I suppose that I always knew I wouldn't be rich. For one thing, I didn't come from a wealthy family (which obviously helps...

I've just finished watching the last episode of ER. I can't think of many series that I've followed from the very first to last show, particularly over a period of some fifteen years. ER has always held a special place in my heart, not least because I saw the characters grow through the years, leave the hospital, in some cases even die off - but I knew that come January, my Monday/Tuesday/ Wednesday/Thursday (delete the appropriate night because Channel 4 kept on changing its mind) would be taken henceforth until the summer rays lit up firstly my parental home, then our first abode and finally the home in which I sit writing this up. Back in 1994, whenever the new medical drama called ER was first televised throughout the British Isles, I had recently completed my undergraduate degree. My MA hadn't been started and I really didn't have a clue about what I was going to end up doing or indeed, being. Life as a single man was interesting to say the least. Not many of ...

Many people have different ways of celebrating the arrival of spring and then summer. Some gingerly remove the clasps on their convertible roofs and push the lever that liberates their car from it's winter hibernation. Others choose to mark the occasion by freezing their bodies in early morning swims in Hyde Park's Serpantine lake. I take a different tact. I slip one band's music into my car stereo and as I'm listening to the Beach Boys' "All Summer Long" CD, I know that the wonderful season we all crave for can't be that far away. Let's talk about the last two days, because in the parlance of the Boys, they have indeed been filled with a lot of fun. On Sunday, my parents and I (Dana was unfortunately unable to join us) took the girls to Regents Park, a location that holds many fond childhood memories. The experience that I wished to share with them was that of boating on the lake. After waiting in line for a tad too long, we finally got into our r...

I have vivid memories of Pesach 1987. As usual, our family was staying in the Grand Beach Hotel in Tel Aviv, enjoying the luxuries being offered to us by the then manager, a very amenable chap called Benny who had befriended my parents. My dad bought the Jerusalem Post every day and I read the biggest news in Israel at that time - the ongoing trial of John Demjanjuk, under charges that he was Ivan the Terrible, a notorious SS guard who had committed the most indescribable savage atrocities at the Treblinka Concentration Camp between 1942 and 43. I'm not exaggerating that Israel was gripped by the events. This being before the onset of the first Intifada that December. It was without a doubt, the biggest news story of the day. This was the closest experience I could have of an Eichmann type trial, seeing that I hadn't been born when the former took place. I read the reports, watched the TV footage of the proceedings and continued to follow events when I got back to London and i...

I wonder who he got it from?

I know myself. There are certain things that I can guarantee I will always do, day after day after day.Exercising is not one of them. Well, that's not quite true - or doesn't seem to three-and-a-half months on. Do you remember that post I wrote back in January, telling you all about the fitness regime that I was undertaking in the humble surroundings of my living room? You can read the original post here . That was back in January and to my surprise, I'm still doing it, quite a few months on. So what's my secret? It's twofold. a) I've incorporated it into my "getting up" routine as I like to name it. I wake up, look at the alarm clock, do a few other morning things (which I won't go into here!) and make my way down to the darkened living room. I then lay a blanket on the parquet floor and use it as my exercise mat. Every day. Like clockwork. In the dark. This is augmented by a Rocky-style regime of three steps up and down the staircase, carried out...

My beloved is celebrating her 61st birthday today. As she enters her 60's, one step closer to hitting three figures, she basks in the glory of the years that have passed her along the way. It hasn't been an easy journey, reaching this 61st anniversary. She has borne many tragedies on her rocky path, but she's still climbing up the mountain, braving the storms, thunder and lightning and overcoming all the obstacles that are hurtled at her on a daily basis. Throughout her 61 years, she has been beaten, battered and bruised, but her friends - her real friends - have been there with her, every step of the way. We, her companions, admirers and devotees know that, despite the harm we may cause ourselves by allying ourselves so selflessly with her cause, it's worth it and always will be. On this special day, the anniversary of your "modern" birth, we salute you and continue to thank G-d for the fact that you are still here and still breathing, emitting a heartbeat th...

"A total of 22,570 men and women have been killed defending the land of Israel since 1860, the year that the first Jewish settlers left the secure walls of Jerusalem to build new Jewish neighborhoods. In the past year, since Remembrance Day 2008, 133 members of the security forces - police, IDF , Border Police, Israel Security Agency and other organizations - have been killed in the service of the state. The last soldier to have died in the line of duty was Capt. Yehonatan Netanel , a deputy company commander in the Paratroopers Brigade, who was killed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in January." This quote can be found on the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. I find it upsetting for many different reasons, not least because it highlights the lie perpetrated by both the Arabs and the media that all the Jews and Arabs who have died defending the land, did so within the last 61 years of Israel's existence. In fact, a fair number had been killed by ...

I have come to the conclusion that often, our Arab cousins have a much better understanding and appreciation of our position than our so called "friends" in the West. This is no more powerfully demonstrated then when reading the following excerpt from MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) which you can also access here . In an article posted April 21, 2009 on the liberal Arab website www.elaph.com , reformist writer Basem Muhammad Habib condemns the Holocaust denial in the Arab world. He states that this trend, which is unreasonable and inhumane, is motivated by political agendas, and by a false belief that empathy for the victims of the Holocaust amounts to a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. He calls on the Arabs to separate these two issues, and to join the world in commemorating the Holocaust, for it was an attack on the very essence of humanity. Following are excerpts: There Is No Connection at All Between the Reality of the Holocaust and What Has ...

I've been digesting the news from around the world for a few weeks and deliberately held back from spewing out the anger that I feel about the injustice that is being purveyed against the State of Israel. I was busy teaching my students instead of doing the following: I didn't get up there at anti-racism conference in Geneva and deliver a vile, racist and rancid rant, on the eve of Yom Hashoah , Israel and the Jewish world's annual remembrance of the Holocaust. I didn't pretend to be a friend of Israel, whilst at the same time encouraging a boycott of good coming out of the country (the Labour Government obviously needs to occupy its mind with other things when its not busy sending out dodgy emails or charging us for porn movie rentals) I didn't spend £20,000 sending a bunch of MP's to a conference where the keynote speaker was a member of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation. I didn't set up a special line to advise anti-Israel boycotters of what produ...

This is great!

As a blogger, I pride myself on the fact that I can write about anything that tickles my fancy. I guess it's lucky that I'm not living in Iran right now. That said, I wonder whether this will go through.

How do I start to describe what's happened since I last posted? What can I write to convey the emotions that have buried themselves inside my biological frame? Should I try? I'm finding life quite difficult right now. I feel that I am at a crossroad, yet, at the same time unable to see the signpost. In one direction,there is the glimmer of a new job on the horizon. I know it's there and I'm excited to jump right in and get cracking. The problem is that the post is across a very long and busy carriageway called the Summer Term. In a week's time, I'm going back to school and frankly, I'm dreading it. The next month promises to be one long pressure pad, from the moment I walk into the school building, until the second my Year 11's walk out at the end of their GCSE's . The pressure I will be under will be almost unbearable and soul destroying - two months of it. Life at home is going to suffer as I will come home tired, harried and irritable. I'll tr...

Teacher:  Good morning.  Your parents. . .  invited me today. . . to give you a private lesson in Israeli  . . .        citizenship. Pupil:  Yeah, we made Aliah  from Vancouver last month and I 'm missing a lot of material in the Ezrahoot ('citizenship') course, though I did try to follow the news before we came. Teacher: Not to worry.  Today we'll talk about,  'how the Israeli electoral system works." Pupil:       That's great.  I'm really confused by what I read in the papers and blogs. Teacher: Let's start with the results of last week's . . . elections.  Pupil:     OK.  Who got the most votes? Teacher: Tsipi Livni, head of the Kadima (=forward) party, with 28 seats. Pupil:       So Ms. Livni won, right? Teacher:  No, she lost.  It doesn't look like she'll be able to get enough partners to form a majority government. Pupil:      What about Bibi Netanyahu? Teacher: He got 27 seats.  As the leader of the right, he may for...

Over the last few days, we have been regaled by the deaths of two very well known individuals, both in tragic circumstances. Natasha Richardson, in all honesty, should have been waking up today, looking at the blue sky and hugging her two teenage children. Jade Goody, at 27 years of age, would of course do exactly the same. Instead, they are both looking down longingly on their lovers and offspring, wondering why life has dealt them such a cruel blow. I'm not one of these people who buys into the "celebrity" circus. I do admit to getting starry eyed when I see a famous person, which isn't something I'm that used to doing - but I refuse to buy into the vapid and in my opinion time-wasting experience that is all the rage these days. I did watch a couple of episodes of Big Brother but soon became bored with the whole concept. The only show I do follow religiously is The Apprentice and only because I see it as a fascinating insight into the way professional people wor...