More media bias and misinterpretation 04/28/2012
Add Comment A story of true hope and inspiration 04/23/2012
From The Times of Israel - 8/4/2012 - http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/at-last-the-sometimes-painful-truth-about-aliyah/ Well, it’s that time of year again when regular followers of this blog allow me to indulge myself in my former career as a racing broadcast journalist. The Cheltenham Festival is once again upon us and, as always, promises to be a sensational four days of hurdles and steeplechase action. Last year I suggested that the Jewish amateur jockey Sam Waley-Cohen would have the audacity to beat all the great professional British and Irish jockeys and actually win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and sure enough the 28-year-old rode a brilliant race aboard the mighty Long Run to beat former champions Denman and Kauto Star in one of the best races seen at the hallowed home of the great sport for many a long year. This year Long Run hasn’t quite been at his peak and was beaten in his first two racecourse outings by the evergreen legend that is Kauto Star before just lasting home at Newbury last month against the smart Burton Port. Even before Kauto Star’s recent injury scare though I had been more than convinced that Waley-Cohen would again find himself in the winners’ enclosure, and the amateur pilot/dental surgery chain owner/royal wedding matchmaker will, I believe, do the business once again on Friday March 16. Long Run is much younger than his main rival and although he has lost twice to Kauto Star I am certain that Nicky Henderson (Long Run’s trainer), has prepared his charge to be at the absolute peak of his powers for the mid-March showdown. He can currently be backed at odds of up to 7/4 – that’s 175% profit on your stake – and I reckon looks good value to retain his crown. Since last year’s race Waley-Cohen was an honoured guest at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, being a close friend of the couple and the man credited with getting them back together after they had separated a couple of years earlier. Waley-Cohen himself walked down the aisle just six weeks later when he married Bella Ballin, with the new Duchess of Cambridge amongst the guests having rushed from the Trooping of the Colour earlier in the day. Waley-Cohen and the Princess have been friends since their student days and Kate is a staunch supporter of the cancer charity the Waley-Cohen family run in memory of Sam’s brother Tom, who tragically passed away a few years ago at the age of just 20. Last year I also suggested that a horse called Menorah might win the Champion Hurdle on the first day of the Cheltenham Festival. The horse named after the seven-stemmed symbol of the State of Israel ran a creditable race, but in the end was no march for the brilliant winner Hurricane Fly and came home fifth of the 11 runners. This year the Philip Hobbs-trained gelding has switched to the bigger challenge of steeplechase fences and has had his share of ups-and-downs (literally), managing to unseat his rider at the second last fence when clear of his rivals at Exeter in the autumn, before winning twice, only to fall at the third fence at Doncaster in January. On the face of it he faces quite a task in the Racing Post Arkle Novice Chase, but the stronger pace and an intensive period of schooling over fences with a renowned expert, gives hope that the seven-year-old might spring a surprise at juicy odds. If you’re interested, Menorah is currently on offer at 10/1 to win the ‘Arkle’ and I reckon he might just run better than many people anticipate at a track where he goes particularly well. So last year’s Israeli/Jewish Cheltenham double returns as this year’s recommendation, and I hope that Sam Waley-Cohen and Long Run, and Richard Johnson and Menorah, go out there, do their very best, and return home safely. Aside of any Jewish/Israeli connections my other two horses to watch at the Cheltenham Festival are Boston Bob (7/2) in the Neptune Investment Management Novices Hurdle (March 14), and Smad Place (16/1) in the Coral Cup later the same day. PS. Candida Baker, wife of racehorse trainer George Baker, (who looked after the Israeli-bred racehorses I managed that raced in Britain over the last few years), is set to ride in the charity race at the Cheltenham Festival and word has it that connections are looking for the ‘perfect’ conveyance to carry her as near as possible to victory on the hallowed Gloucestershire turf. Don’t say you weren’t told! I have an old friend who has achieved considerable success in the field of investigative print journalism and whose counsel I have sought in the past on a variety of matters. He’s visited most places in the more volatile regions of the world and consistently produced a high standard of objective reporting. One day we were discussing the way he is perceived by the media and indeed, by the general public, and he made a statement that for me should set the benchmark for objective coverage of news in the industry. He said “One day they love me, the next day they hate me. Jews think I’m anti-Semitic, Muslims think I’m anti-Islamist, and churchgoers think I’m one of those atheists who undermine Christianity! I must be doing something right!” When you hear right-wing supporters refer to a media source as left-wing, and left-wing supporters refer to the same as right-wing, you can bet your bottom dollar that the source of the argument is almost certainly walking the middle line, and that is how the new Times of Israel website has been perceived by a number of people who have discussed the matter with me in recent days since the site was launched only a week ago. In short, it’s an encouraging start for an online newspaper that has set out with the express intent of trying to reflect as accurately as possible all sides of the argument. The danger, of course, is that if you are not careful you can end up falling between too stools. Most people like to read what they want to hear, and if they don’t have their opinions validated by their newspaper they can easily consign it to the dustbin. The Times of Israel has been created by the respected journalist and former Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz, with financial backing from the hugely wealthy American fund manager and philanthropist Seth Klarman. In his first article on the founding of the new title Horovitz accurately described the internal frictions in Israel as follows: “I happen to think that we Jews, in this one country where we’re a majority, can be our own worst enemies – spectacularly intolerant of one another, in ways we would never tolerate in Jewish communities overseas. We undermined our two previous attempts at sovereignty millennia ago, through internal hatreds; we’ve murdered our own prime minister this time; we suffer streams of Judaism furiously at odds with each other. We argue bitterly, incessantly, over the best means to safeguard the well-being of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation worldwide.” Sadly, it’s hard to argue with Horovitz’s assessment of the people of this country, but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a player in the Israeli and international media that reflects both sides of the argument to a local and international audience, and does so in English. Most people perceive the long established Jerusalem Post to be a right-leaning publication, whilst it’s hard to argue anything other than Ha’aretz having a strong left-wing slant, and until this month they have been the only two English-language newspapers of any note based in Israel and focusing on Israeli and world Jewish affairs. A few weeks ago I was approached by the Times of Israel to produce additional blog material for their new site - separate from that which appears on my own blog - and like all the other bloggers on their roster have been given a free hand to write about what interests, concerns or amuses me. I’m happy to be able to speak to a wider audience and hope they find my thoughts on life here in Israel and the region of some interest, but I will continue on a fortnightly basis to offer my opinions on developments in this ever more volatile region via this blog and hope you too will continue to visit. With the outcome of so many different regional conflicts and the growing internal conflict here in Israel almost impossible to call, there will be much on which to focus in the remaining 10 months of 2012. Via this blog and the Times of Israel, I hope you will find time to consider my opinion alongside those of many far more learned and high-profile figures than me, and will pass on the links to both websites in an effort to spread the word and give as many people as possible a broader, fairer view of life in the State of Israel. “Fair-minded journalism”, wrote Horovitz in his opening message to readers of the new website, “based in Israel, and read both here in Israel and among those who care for the Jewish nation around the world, has a vital, even noble role to play in enabling informed debate over the challenges and the choices that face the Jewish state. Informing that debate is one of the prime goals of The Times of Israel.” I wish him and all the team involved in the project the very best of luck in what is going to be a tough battle for the hearts and minds of Israeli readers and those in international Jewry and far beyond. Do As I Say, Not As I Do 02/12/2012
It’s hard to believe that 30 years have passed since the needless and highly emotional Falklands War, the conflict that saved Margaret Thatcher from what appeared to be almost certain electoral defeat at the end of a brutal first term as Conservative Prime Minister. Faced with rising unemployment and civil unrest, the ‘Iron Lady’ reached for what so many unpopular politicians around the globe have done for centuries and managed to fashion a war to get the country behind her, giving the flag-waving ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ mob something to be proud of. First though, she had to find someone to fight and then be sure she could successfully finish whatever she started. When the half-witted General Galtieri decided to lay claim to the Falkland Islands not so very far from the coast of his football-mad South American nation of Argentina, Thatcher and her cohorts suddenly realised they had been handed an open goal and rushed to step up and put the Argies away. I vividly remember watching a news bulletin at the time when a BBC reporter asked a sample of people going about their daily business if they had ever heard of the Falkland Islands, and if they had, where were they? The few that had heard of them thought they were in the Caribbean or somewhere near the Canary Islands! The rest is history. The Task Force steamed 14,000 kilometres to defend the rocky outcrop where sheep outnumbered the human inhabitants by 10 to 1, and where, (by general consensus), the less than 3000 islanders were somewhat like the land on which they eeked out a living; remote, rugged and often inhospitable. Battles at Goose Green and Mount Tumbledown cost British military lives together with a great many more on the Argentinan side, most of whom were inadequately trained conscripts. Whilst the sinking of the General Belgrano remains the biggest stain on her bloodlust-filled reputation for which millions, like me, hated Margaret Thatcher – reports (by the way), leaked some years later confirmed that the Argentine ship had surrendered and was steaming away from the scene of the military action when Thatcher insisted on it being torpedoed with the ensuing loss of 323 lives – but the fact remains that the victory ensured she would gain another term in office, which eventually stretched to a marathon 12-year stint at the helm of British politics. Looking back 30 years, I still recall people wondering why on earth Britain was putting our soldiers’ lives at risk for land that surely had nothing to do with us and was an outdated relic of the British imperialist past. Now, all of a sudden, as the 30th anniversary of the war has arrived, the current democratically elected Argentine leadership has lost no time in resurrecting their claim to the islands they call ‘Las Malvinas’, and frankly, I believe they have a great deal more of a right to the Falklands than do the Brits, for whom defending the island and keeping a permanent military presence has been a massive cost to the British taxpayer for three decades. The possibility of crude oil being found in the South Atlantic seas around the Falklands however is undoubtedly the main interest the British have in holding on this land after having given away Hong Kong, all their nations in Africa and the Caribbean, not to mention India and many more, without too much of a struggle. All of a sudden, David Cameron has sent a destroyer to patrol the waters in a thinly veiled provocation towards the ‘old enemy’. A huge fan of Mrs T, maybe ‘our Dave’ is attempting to fashion his own Falklands skirmish to distract attention amongst the masses as austerity bites back home. The reason I draw attention to the British government’s “outrage” at the ‘bloody foreigners’ claim to the land 14,000 kilometres from London and only 700 kilometres from Argentine soil, is that I find it somewhat galling and the height of hypocrisy when Britain attempts to take the moral high-ground and tell Israel exactly what we should be doing with land that we actually live on day-to-day and don’t administer from the other side of the world! Are the British really in any position to lecture to Israel, (or the Palestinians for that matter), on how they should settle land disputes when they refuse to even negotiate or consider handing back land that they clearly have no moral right to, no historical claim over, and that is only theirs because they insist they were the first to land on the rocky backwater back in the 1690’s, although both the Spanish and the Portuguese repeatedly suggest they found it first? Argentina has decided to take its case to the UN and unlike 1982 is heading to New York with the support of most of South and Latin America, just for starters. The British intransigence and pig-headedness about land that has absolutely no bearing on the day-to-day life of 99.99% of British citizens, shows just how two-faced they are, something that should be thrown back at them time and again when they insist on lecturing to Israel about how they should define borders of a piece of land, home to more than seven million people that is barely the size of Wales, and whose collective ancestors have tilled the dusty soil for as many as 4000 years. Surely this is just another brazen case so ably encapsulated in the well known words of the 17th century English academic John Selden, who wrote in his novel Table Talk of 1654, that preachers are often guilty of insisting, “Do as I say, not as I do”. Homeless Hamas hierarchy turn to Jordan 01/29/2012
Over the years, including the years prior to their election victory in Gaza and subsequent slaughter of those with opposing ideologies, whenever someone expressed sympathy for Hamas and their ‘justifiable actions’, allied to their suffering in comparison to others in the Arab world, I would tend to pose the question, "If theirs is such a just case, why do so few of their Arab brethren open their arms and welcome these people, give them equal rights and even the most modest financial support to improve their lot?" The answer is far from simple, of course. The Arab nation has long looked down its nose at the Palestinians and seen them as little more than a tool with which to beat Israel, the US, and those they consider to be former Imperialist occupiers. The words ‘Arab’ and ‘brotherhood’ are the ultimate misnomer. As we see every day on the news from points of the compass as far removed as Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria and beyond, Muslims kill dozens of times more Muslims, and Arabs kill 100’s of times more Arabs than do Israelis, Americans, Christians, Hindus, or Sikhs put together. There is, in short, little love lost between Arabs, between Muslims, and in particular, between the Arab majority and the Palestinians, a people for whom most Arabs have a barely hidden disdain. So why, having kicked Hamas out of Jordan in 1999, is King Abdullah suddenly flinging open his arms to embrace Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal as little less than a returning hero? The answer is that unfortunately he has very little choice in the matter. Abdullah is in very, very big trouble, and whilst the eyes of the world have been focused on Syria and the awful slaughter Assad is raining down on his own people, the flames of discontent have been fanning ever more strongly across Syria’s border to Jordan, where the majority of the population is now Palestinian. Abdullah, (whose own wife Queen Rania is a Palestinian), is beginning to lose his grip on power with open dissent now commonplace on the streets of Amman and beyond, something that was virtually unheard of even a few months ago. Even Abdullah’s recent peace offering of five acres of land to anyone who wants it to begin their own farmstead has apparently fallen on deaf ears. So, with Meshaal and his goons forced out of Syria by the rapidly deteriorating situation there and looking for a new home, the last thing Abdullah wants is for Meshaal to appeal to the Palestinian majority in Jordan and ask them to rise up against the Hashemite dynasty. The old adage of “keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer” was never more prescient. If Abdullah can find a way to rehabilitate Meshaal into Jordanian society the Hamas leader could well end up being the trump card that saves the King’s regime, a dynasty that began in 1922 when the British (who were mandated to administrate what was then Palestine and Transjordan), agreed that the present King’s grandfather Abdullah I, would be ruler of a new nation which ended up being overseen by the British until 1946, when the modern state of Jordan was born. The mass of Palestine Arabs who sought what they expected to be temporary safe haven in Jordan after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, on the opposite side of the Jordan River, remained where they fled after Israel’s unlikely victory over the combined forces of the Arab world, and the Palestinians (as they subsequently became known), were a continual thorn in the side of the present king’s father, the late King Hussein. In 1971, following a series of battles that reportedly cost thousands of lives, he famously forced the PLO out of Jordan in what became known as ‘Black September’, after discovering Yasser Arafat and his cohorts plotting against the country that had given them safe haven. Most of them fled to Lebanon and began causing trouble there instead. The extended history of the Jordanian people and the Palestinians is too complicated to reduce to this ‘bite-size’ offering, but suffice it to say that by sheer weight of numbers and having bred substantially faster than the native Jordanians, the Palestinians now once again represent a highly significant and potentially overwhelming threat to the Jordanian regime. With long-standing Arab dynasties falling like nine-pins in the region and the mirage of real secular democracy in countries like Egypt and Libya already being replaced by Islamist parties with very different agendas, the Palestinians in Jordan now hold a very strong hand. Abdullah is desperate to reach out, grab that hand, and hold on to his kingdom. Time might well prove that sadly, the Sandhurst educated King is on a very sticky wicket! Time and tide wait for no man 01/16/2012
“Time and tide wait for no man” and as the years tick by the generation that helped create the modern State of Israel and who suffered the early decades of poverty and wars are inevitably fading away. On Sunday morning my wife Paz’s much loved grandmother ‘Safta’ Sonya passed away a week short of her 95th birthday. To have lived to such a ripe old age is something to be celebrated, and although all the family are saddened by her passing, her recent years of ill health and the blight of Alzheimers Disease are at an end. We remember her, like so many of her generation, with pride and much affection – a lovely little lady (she was only 4ft 6ins in her later years), who had a heart of gold. Sonya’s story in many way mirrors the experience of so many of the older generation of Israelis. Born in Poland while World War I was still raging, she grew up in the town of Zakopane in the south of the country where her family ran a small hotel and greeted guests who came especially in winter to sample the excellent skiing the town had to offer, situated as it is at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. When the Nazis took Poland in late-summer 1939 life changed completely for Sonya and like so many other hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews she suffered the trauma of losing most of her family - her parents died in Auschwitz. Her brother, Lolek, was confined in the infamous Warsaw Ghetto before also being transferred to Auschwitz, but he survived, later making his way to Israel where in later years he became one of the country’s first skiing instructors with the development of the resort in the Golan on Mount Hermon. Sonya and her husband however managed to escape and flee to the East, moving from place to place as the Nazis swarmed all over the territory on their way to try and conquer Russia and remaining in continual pursuit of as many Jews as they could find. It was in Uzbekistan that she eventually found safe haven together with a number of other Jews who made the perilous flight across borders and eventually reached Samarkand, where in 1943 Paz’s father, Dan, was born. The Muslim community of Samarkand gave sanctuary to the Jewish refugees, (a fact too easily forgotten in light of the difficulties with radical Islam these days), and Sonya and her young son survived there until the war ended. When the extent of the extermination of Polish Jewry became clear in the aftermath of the war the overwhelming majority of Polish Jewish survivors understandably felt they had nothing left to go back to, being fully aware of the complicity of many of the local Poles in the murder of their Jewish communities. Many headed to the US, to South Africa, and many others went to Palestine which was still under the British mandate. Sonya however chose to go back to Poland and made her home in Warsaw, where she remained until 1956 when a new wave of anti-Semitism swept the country and she felt that this time she had to leave. Having decided to make a new life for her family, (which now included a second son, Efraim), she was persuaded by her husband to go on ahead with her boys to Israel while he wrapped up their affairs in Poland. This she did, only to find that her husband would never join them, deciding instead to abandon her and his sons and begin a new life for himself with a new partner, leaving Sonya in a foreign country with no money, no home, no friends, and unable to speak the language. That she overcame terrible financial and personal difficulties and managed to support her sons, (Dan went to live on a kibbutz and Efraim stayed with his mother), by making clothes and later being a costume designer for a number of Israeli theatres, working immensely long hours for poor pay, was a huge credit to this tiny, but very big-hearted and determined lady. Amongst the family, stories of Sonya are legend. Locking herself in the toilet at Heathrow Airport on a connecting flight to the US to visit her younger son and being unable neither to get out nor to explain to those on the other side of the door what had happened as she spoke Polish, moderate Hebrew, German, Russian and Yiddish, but no English, whilst on another occasion assuming there was no proper food in America, she flew directly to LA with a bottle of her favourite garlic olive oil in her hand luggage only to inadvertently forget to fasten the lid properly. Half an hour into the 14-hour journey the passengers started to complain about a pungent smell in the cabin and it took some time before the sweet little lady was revealed as the culprit! I always found her to be great fun, and amazingly (when considering the terrible trials and tribulations she had been through), an eternal optimist. Whenever asked about what she would like she would always state ‘Rak briut’ – just good health – and she always took my teasing in great part as I always asked her to stand up and then feigned shock that she already was! When my family first met Paz’s, my abiding memory of the evening is of being unable to find my mother, then spotting her out on the back lawn with Sonya who was giving Mum a lesson in Sonya’s beloved Tai Chee, the pair of them standing on one leg each and wafting their hands around slowly and deliberately through the night air. To pass her on the street no one could possibly imagine what this tiny lady had lived through and achieved, but in many ways Sonya’s life was not so different to many of her generation whose suffering and fortitude in coming from post-Holocaust Europe, or those from the Arab lands from which so many fled for their lives in the 1950’s, helped establish this country and provide a place for Jewish people to live without fear of repression or persecution. Time is running out for Israelis to enjoy these last few years with Sonya’s generation, and those still with us should be truly appreciated and cherished for their many achievement against all the odds. | AuthorPaul Alster 
The inspiring story of Anita Shkedi
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