I swear too much, and now my 23 month old son, Leo does too. I should be ashamed, but when I hear the words and see his angelic face, it’s awfully hard not to feel some pride. I’ve tried hard to curb my language in the presence of my son- but some people drive me over the edge. The other day I was on the phone with our health insurance company, Aetna, trying to renew a prescription. Believe me when I tell you that I would rather be a prisoner at Abu Ghraib circa 2004 than deal with Aetna regarding even the most trifling issue, and this instance was no different. The Aetna rep was trying to convince me- with all of the zeal of a Hitler Youth Group member- that my prescription- which is normally a $150 co-pay, should be $525. And 96 cents. At some point during our conversation, she elected to try to pawn me off on someone else. A common tactic for these types of scoundrels.
I listened to Bach for 35 minutes, preparing to battle with one of her colleagues, and then finally silence. Then the loud cacophony of that indescribable noise you hear when you’ve been disconnected. “F**K YOU!” I shouted into the receiver. Leo wasn’t in the room, but I was loud enough for him to hear me, and for the next hour or so, he sauntered around the house saying the same thing, but in a much cuter and provocative way. He’d say the first word like someone from South Boston, faahk, and would drag out the YOOOOOOOUUUUU, and then smile broadly, knowing that he was saying something naughty. Its funny, but when you strip away all of the customary anger from the phrase, and say it with a big smile, the words lose their normal connotation. My wife, Jen, however, was not nearly as amused by this as I was. We had to quarantine the boy in the house until he stopped saying it for fear that we’d lose custody of him when some over-officious soccer mom from our all too busybody neighborhood was told to f’ off by my charming 23 month old son.
On another recent occasion the word for the day was “bullshit.” Everything was “BOOOL-SHEEET!” It was so damn funny, I had to record the moment for posterity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXOFQsEwAbI Even while the camera rolled my wife was telling him it wasn’t a good word to say. His response? “BULLSHIT!” I guess the pride that I feel in him is bizarre- and my poor parenting here is something that could come back to haunt us when he tries to send us his therapy bills as an adult. But for now, I’m OK with letting my son imitate some of my less than truly outstanding character traits. Though I have to admit the one trait of mine he apes which is not amusing is his picky eating. The boy's diet is about as diverse as a Klu Klux Klan meeting in North Dakota. Perhaps though, Leo will inspire me to eat better and clean up my act. But don’t f*!ing count on it.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Patrick bin Laden?
Sometimes cab drivers deserve a good beating. I don’t know if Jan Radecki- the Buffalo cab driver who was driving without a license after multiple DWI convictions when he was allegedly beaten by Blackhawks star Patrick Kane and his cousin, James- falls in the category of drivers who need beatings, but I do know that the local media here in Chicago has covered this story more aggressively than any major international news event in recent memory. We’re at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet, you’d hardly know it from looking at the Chicago Tribune which ran the story front page above the fold on both the front and sports sections yesterday, with a huge blow up of Kane’s slightly sinister looking mug shot. You would think that young Kane had murdered someone, or at the very least had caused grave bodily injury. I've had my nose broken before (during gym class in 8th grade football) and I've gotten into a tussle with a cab driver, so I'm something of an authority on this topic.
There is no excuse for taking shots at anyone, other than self-defense, and the Kane boys obviously behaved boorishly no matter what the situation was. The truth, however, is that only three people know exactly what happened- the Kane boys and Jan Radecki- and it’s entirely possible that all three of them were intoxicated when the incident occurred. It seems clear that some kind of altercation occurred- but was it a savage beating or was it a scuffle? All we know for sure is that Radecki suffered a broken nose, but did not require hospitalization and seemed to be O.K. when he appeared on television. He obviously had a strong incentive to exaggerate the extent of the “beating” when he learned that Kane was a multimillionaire. His lawyer has now stated that the whole matter has been blown out of proportion, so maybe Radecki has already received or agreed upon the payoff that he wanted all along.
We don’t know Patrick Kane’s side of the story, but we do know that at least he had the good sense not to drive drunk- good sense that has apparently eluded Jan Radecki on multiple occasions. Let me return to my opening thesis that sometimes cab drivers deserve a beating. Once, while in traveling in China’s western Xinjiang region, I nearly got into a wrestling match with a cab driver myself, over what I later realized was over little more than $1. I had negotiated a flat price of 40 Yuan for a ride back to my hotel but when we arrived he tried to charge me 50, and when I balked, he peeled out and sped away from the hotel with me still in the back seat, cursing at me in Mandarin. He owed me 10 Yuan, and, on principal, I wanted it back, especially since giving substantial tips for cab rides is not customary in China.
I didn’t know what to do so I flung open one of the doors while he was driving and that spooked him, so he pulled back in front of the hotel and started yelling at me to get out of the cab from behind a protective cage that separated the front seats from the back ones. By then, I was furious and wanted my change, so I screamed back at him to give me the money and started violently rattling the cage-like barrier that separated us. The driver then began trying to poke me with a sharp pointer through the cage’s openings, and eventually I grabbed it and engaged in a tug of war with him for it. Soon enough someone from the hotel came out and took my side in the argument and got my money back for me.
But I must admit- if that barrier had not been there, I might have choked this guy in the heat of the dispute. True, I didn’t actually punch him, and I’m not a millionaire hockey player, but nonetheless, I can appreciate the fact that sometimes cab drivers are crooks, drunks, or even worse.
Let's face it- Jan Radecki is the luckiest cab driver in Buffalo. He had been operating illegally- no doubt struggling to make ends meet, and now he'll probably be able to retire with his payout. I'd take a broken nose for that. All of this doesn’t mean that Pat Kane is an angel or that he needs our sympathy. He had a few too many drinks and made some bad decisions- something pretty common for 20 year olds. He has already no doubt cost himself a fortune in lost endorsements, and he and his family have already suffered from the shame of this incident, but, from all accounts, Patrick is a good kid and deserves a chance at redemption. Maybe Jan Radecki does too, but you won’t find me getting in his cab anytime soon.
There is no excuse for taking shots at anyone, other than self-defense, and the Kane boys obviously behaved boorishly no matter what the situation was. The truth, however, is that only three people know exactly what happened- the Kane boys and Jan Radecki- and it’s entirely possible that all three of them were intoxicated when the incident occurred. It seems clear that some kind of altercation occurred- but was it a savage beating or was it a scuffle? All we know for sure is that Radecki suffered a broken nose, but did not require hospitalization and seemed to be O.K. when he appeared on television. He obviously had a strong incentive to exaggerate the extent of the “beating” when he learned that Kane was a multimillionaire. His lawyer has now stated that the whole matter has been blown out of proportion, so maybe Radecki has already received or agreed upon the payoff that he wanted all along.
We don’t know Patrick Kane’s side of the story, but we do know that at least he had the good sense not to drive drunk- good sense that has apparently eluded Jan Radecki on multiple occasions. Let me return to my opening thesis that sometimes cab drivers deserve a beating. Once, while in traveling in China’s western Xinjiang region, I nearly got into a wrestling match with a cab driver myself, over what I later realized was over little more than $1. I had negotiated a flat price of 40 Yuan for a ride back to my hotel but when we arrived he tried to charge me 50, and when I balked, he peeled out and sped away from the hotel with me still in the back seat, cursing at me in Mandarin. He owed me 10 Yuan, and, on principal, I wanted it back, especially since giving substantial tips for cab rides is not customary in China.
I didn’t know what to do so I flung open one of the doors while he was driving and that spooked him, so he pulled back in front of the hotel and started yelling at me to get out of the cab from behind a protective cage that separated the front seats from the back ones. By then, I was furious and wanted my change, so I screamed back at him to give me the money and started violently rattling the cage-like barrier that separated us. The driver then began trying to poke me with a sharp pointer through the cage’s openings, and eventually I grabbed it and engaged in a tug of war with him for it. Soon enough someone from the hotel came out and took my side in the argument and got my money back for me.
But I must admit- if that barrier had not been there, I might have choked this guy in the heat of the dispute. True, I didn’t actually punch him, and I’m not a millionaire hockey player, but nonetheless, I can appreciate the fact that sometimes cab drivers are crooks, drunks, or even worse.
Let's face it- Jan Radecki is the luckiest cab driver in Buffalo. He had been operating illegally- no doubt struggling to make ends meet, and now he'll probably be able to retire with his payout. I'd take a broken nose for that. All of this doesn’t mean that Pat Kane is an angel or that he needs our sympathy. He had a few too many drinks and made some bad decisions- something pretty common for 20 year olds. He has already no doubt cost himself a fortune in lost endorsements, and he and his family have already suffered from the shame of this incident, but, from all accounts, Patrick is a good kid and deserves a chance at redemption. Maybe Jan Radecki does too, but you won’t find me getting in his cab anytime soon.
Get Left in Samoa
Travel warning: probably best to avoid Samoa around September 7th,and possibly for sometime thereafter. The government of Samoa plans to switch the country’s road rules on that day at 6AM from drive on the right, to drive on the left. And you thought the U.S. government was f’ed up, right? Apparently, the Samoans are hoping to cater to Aussie and Kiwi tourists, who are used to driving on the left, and also hope to buy or get for free some of their second hand cars as well. Fair enough, but the problem is that some villages are saying they do not plan to honor the switch. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25918978-12335,00.html
You can imagine the chaos that is likely to ensue. I also wonder what people who are already on the road, around say 5.45 AM on September 7th are supposed to do- start out in the right, and then watch the clock in order to move left at 6? Or perhaps no one is up by 6AM in Samoa? The Samoan government has declared a four day weekend to allow citizens to get used to the new rules- or perhaps to ensure that everyone will be out getting plastered the night before and will be sleeping in late on September 7th. I would honestly like to see Chicago suddenly declare that we too plan to start driving on the left on September 7th- only because a small part of me is an anarchist that would love to view- from afar, perhaps with binoculars or a telescope- the ensuing chaos. We'd market it as an attempt to attrack British tourists, but maybe we'd just encourage them to drive on the left, while the rest of us stay on the right. Just for shits and giggles mate.
You can imagine the chaos that is likely to ensue. I also wonder what people who are already on the road, around say 5.45 AM on September 7th are supposed to do- start out in the right, and then watch the clock in order to move left at 6? Or perhaps no one is up by 6AM in Samoa? The Samoan government has declared a four day weekend to allow citizens to get used to the new rules- or perhaps to ensure that everyone will be out getting plastered the night before and will be sleeping in late on September 7th. I would honestly like to see Chicago suddenly declare that we too plan to start driving on the left on September 7th- only because a small part of me is an anarchist that would love to view- from afar, perhaps with binoculars or a telescope- the ensuing chaos. We'd market it as an attempt to attrack British tourists, but maybe we'd just encourage them to drive on the left, while the rest of us stay on the right. Just for shits and giggles mate.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Don't Have a Cow
This weekend I visited two places where living things are born- the Fair Oaks Farms in Fair, Oaks, Indiana and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago- and wanted to share a few observations about birthing experiences. We stumbled across the Fair Oaks Farm (FOF) on our way home from a tennis tournament in Indianapolis. I noticed a brochure for the place while filing up my gas tank in the adjacent gas station, and thought that my son, Leo, who is nearly2, might enjoy the diversion to break the monotony of the long drive from Indy to Chicago. The FOF is actually a big business; tickets for adults are $10 and entitle one to take a bus tour of the facility and to access to the “birthing center.” I was curious, but not curious enough to pay $20 for us to enter, so we kind of just slid in past a traffic signal which was green and said “head”, and in through the exit.
A surreal, only-in-the-Hoosier state moment awaited us: a hushed, darkened auditorium full of (mostly obese) people snacking as though in a cinema with their eyes transfixed on two colossal cows in labor behind a glass enclosure. One of the cows was actually in the process of pushing the calf out, while the other appeared to still be timing her contractions and waiting for her epidural. My wife, Jen, who is 8 months pregnant, remarked that she “was glad she didn’t have to go through labor in front of a crowd of curious onlookers.” Of course, the entire scene was ghastly, and I did not stick around to cut the umbilical cord, but I was fascinated from a sociological perspective about why people would pay good money to witness this kind of spectacle. I was also curious to know why several of the middle aged men in attendance were wearing white Fruit of the Loom-like undershirts, shorts, and dark, knee-high dress socks with black dress shoes, but I never received any insights into either trend.
With this undignified birthing experience still fresh in our minds, we scheduled a tour of the maternity ward at Rush U.H. in Chicago, where our insurance company suggests we bring our second son into this world later this summer. Two summers ago, I took a tour of a different hospital, that a different insurance company “recommended” for us to bring our first son into the world, and was dismayed to be stuck on a tour with a collection of, pardon the vulgarity, dumb asses who dragged the session out with questions like, “should I bring my own slippers?” So on this tour, I was relieved to see that there was only one other couple- who coincidentally shared our due date- ready to “tour” with us. The woman looked to be in her late 30’s, and was dressed for a Phish concert. Her husband/boyfriend/fiancé/sperm donor bore a serious expression and had a haircut like Brüno, circa the Da Ali G Show days. I should have been concerned by the fact that he was carrying pen and paper but I simply failed to see the signs. I knew we were in for an interesting tour though when the woman told Jen that she was “planning a homebirth, but was at the hospital just to check it out.”
Our tour leader was a very kind, matronly young woman- exactly the kind of person you’d want to help you through labor- who took pains to tell us about any potential downsides to giving birth at Rush. Each of these potential downsides- which seemed trifling to us- was a source of major angst for the homebirth couple. Homebirth mama (HM) was outraged when the guide mentioned that it was standard for the baby to be taken perhaps an hour or so after birth, to the nursery for an hour to have a bath and undergo some basic tests, including a hearing test and others. The guide tried to reassure her that she’d have time to bond with the baby first, and that the father could accompany the child to the nursery, but hm wasn’t mollified. It doesn’t make sense, why can’t the mother go? Well, because you’ll still be bleeding, etc, etc, the guide explained quite rationally, but again, this did not seem to sit well, as hm seemed to be convinced that the hospital was involved in some diabolical plot to sell the infant’s organs or put them in a BabyGap ad or something. Once she laid to rest the issue of her accompanying the newborn to the nursery, she wanted to know what tests she was entitled to refuse, once again, the premise being that the doctor’s are testing the child’s hearing and other functions simply to subject them to cruel and unusual punishment.
Husband/boyfriend/fiancé/sperm donor was similarly militant and no-nonsense. He would fire off questions- like, can we get a walking epidural? And then, seemingly, write down every word of the response as though he were a court reporter at a trial. I had the distinct impression that the homebirth couple were preparing a lawsuit, even all the while vowing not to give birth in the place. Hm clucked disapprovingly when she saw that the labor rooms didn’t have “birthing tubs”, but was reassured to know that her doula, and indeed whomever else she wanted in the room with her was welcome. Bring your shrink, I thought. “Are the nurses and doctors open to alternative positions and stuff?” she wanted to know. “Oh yeah, definitely,” the guide replied, “we had a woman recently who gave birth on all fours.” “That’s awesome,” hm commented approvingly, with the clear conviction that non-traditional= good, and traditional = bad.
Now I know that having a healthy degree of skepticism for the medical profession and for the baby-factory approach that many hospitals take these days is warranted, and I’m all for trying to do things the natural/organic way. But when it comes to my wife’s health and the health and well being of my unborn son, I’m not really down with going retro and kicking it old school with towels and bandages in our bedroom. Every birth is different, but my first son, Leo was all about hanging on in the womb until the last possible moment- and he eventually had to be “vaccumed” out of the womb after an exhausting 3 hours of pushing. It was a stressful birth for both mother and child and could not have been predicted based upon a very uneventful pregnancy. There is no way I would have wanted to, as they say in show business, “try this at home.” Nor would I have wanted to try to move to a hospital once the going got tough half-way through. But this is America, and everyone has the right to do as they please. If I had to do it all over again though, I’d certainly prefer to be born in a hospital- not a home, and certainly not in a bail of hay, in front of an auditorium full of hoosiers.
A surreal, only-in-the-Hoosier state moment awaited us: a hushed, darkened auditorium full of (mostly obese) people snacking as though in a cinema with their eyes transfixed on two colossal cows in labor behind a glass enclosure. One of the cows was actually in the process of pushing the calf out, while the other appeared to still be timing her contractions and waiting for her epidural. My wife, Jen, who is 8 months pregnant, remarked that she “was glad she didn’t have to go through labor in front of a crowd of curious onlookers.” Of course, the entire scene was ghastly, and I did not stick around to cut the umbilical cord, but I was fascinated from a sociological perspective about why people would pay good money to witness this kind of spectacle. I was also curious to know why several of the middle aged men in attendance were wearing white Fruit of the Loom-like undershirts, shorts, and dark, knee-high dress socks with black dress shoes, but I never received any insights into either trend.
With this undignified birthing experience still fresh in our minds, we scheduled a tour of the maternity ward at Rush U.H. in Chicago, where our insurance company suggests we bring our second son into this world later this summer. Two summers ago, I took a tour of a different hospital, that a different insurance company “recommended” for us to bring our first son into the world, and was dismayed to be stuck on a tour with a collection of, pardon the vulgarity, dumb asses who dragged the session out with questions like, “should I bring my own slippers?” So on this tour, I was relieved to see that there was only one other couple- who coincidentally shared our due date- ready to “tour” with us. The woman looked to be in her late 30’s, and was dressed for a Phish concert. Her husband/boyfriend/fiancé/sperm donor bore a serious expression and had a haircut like Brüno, circa the Da Ali G Show days. I should have been concerned by the fact that he was carrying pen and paper but I simply failed to see the signs. I knew we were in for an interesting tour though when the woman told Jen that she was “planning a homebirth, but was at the hospital just to check it out.”
Our tour leader was a very kind, matronly young woman- exactly the kind of person you’d want to help you through labor- who took pains to tell us about any potential downsides to giving birth at Rush. Each of these potential downsides- which seemed trifling to us- was a source of major angst for the homebirth couple. Homebirth mama (HM) was outraged when the guide mentioned that it was standard for the baby to be taken perhaps an hour or so after birth, to the nursery for an hour to have a bath and undergo some basic tests, including a hearing test and others. The guide tried to reassure her that she’d have time to bond with the baby first, and that the father could accompany the child to the nursery, but hm wasn’t mollified. It doesn’t make sense, why can’t the mother go? Well, because you’ll still be bleeding, etc, etc, the guide explained quite rationally, but again, this did not seem to sit well, as hm seemed to be convinced that the hospital was involved in some diabolical plot to sell the infant’s organs or put them in a BabyGap ad or something. Once she laid to rest the issue of her accompanying the newborn to the nursery, she wanted to know what tests she was entitled to refuse, once again, the premise being that the doctor’s are testing the child’s hearing and other functions simply to subject them to cruel and unusual punishment.
Husband/boyfriend/fiancé/sperm donor was similarly militant and no-nonsense. He would fire off questions- like, can we get a walking epidural? And then, seemingly, write down every word of the response as though he were a court reporter at a trial. I had the distinct impression that the homebirth couple were preparing a lawsuit, even all the while vowing not to give birth in the place. Hm clucked disapprovingly when she saw that the labor rooms didn’t have “birthing tubs”, but was reassured to know that her doula, and indeed whomever else she wanted in the room with her was welcome. Bring your shrink, I thought. “Are the nurses and doctors open to alternative positions and stuff?” she wanted to know. “Oh yeah, definitely,” the guide replied, “we had a woman recently who gave birth on all fours.” “That’s awesome,” hm commented approvingly, with the clear conviction that non-traditional= good, and traditional = bad.
Now I know that having a healthy degree of skepticism for the medical profession and for the baby-factory approach that many hospitals take these days is warranted, and I’m all for trying to do things the natural/organic way. But when it comes to my wife’s health and the health and well being of my unborn son, I’m not really down with going retro and kicking it old school with towels and bandages in our bedroom. Every birth is different, but my first son, Leo was all about hanging on in the womb until the last possible moment- and he eventually had to be “vaccumed” out of the womb after an exhausting 3 hours of pushing. It was a stressful birth for both mother and child and could not have been predicted based upon a very uneventful pregnancy. There is no way I would have wanted to, as they say in show business, “try this at home.” Nor would I have wanted to try to move to a hospital once the going got tough half-way through. But this is America, and everyone has the right to do as they please. If I had to do it all over again though, I’d certainly prefer to be born in a hospital- not a home, and certainly not in a bail of hay, in front of an auditorium full of hoosiers.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Rumored to be interested in Bristol Palin
Full disclosure: I am the originator of the aforementioned rumor. But really, is the idea of Silvio Berlusconi and Bristol Palin as a couple really so far fetched? If you think about it, the pairing actually makes a lot of sense. Surely by now you’ve heard that Berlusconi’s wife is divorcing him because she believes he’s been having an affair with an 18-year-old lingerie model, Noemi Letizia from Naples? (His version is that he attended her 18th birthday party and gave her an expensive necklace simply because he happened to be in Naples, and knew her father) No Italian news story- not earthquakes, volcanoes, Italy’s seemingly semi-annual elections, or even the installation of a new pontiff at the Vatican receives as much news coverage as Berlusconi’s alleged affair. And rightfully so- Silvio’s affair with the buxom teenager is a very, very important event. O.K. so maybe its not so important, but it is a great story, isn’t it? Why the hell doesn’t anything this interesting happen in the U.S.? Oh yeah, Lewinsky. Still, Hillary didn’t leave Bill though, so that story is still way behind this one.
According to the Italian newspaper La Republica, Berlusconi first met Letizia at a New Years Eve bash Berlusconi hosted last year. Supposedly Silvio saw her photo in a magazine, found her telephone number and dialed her directly to invite her to the party. Super Silvio supposedly invited 30 other young, attractive single women to this party as well. Good old Silvio. So what about Silvio and Bristol? Bristol is on the cover of this week People magazine wearing her graduation cap and gown and posing with her 5 month old baby, Tripp. (Tripp’s aunts and uncles names are Trigg, Track, Willow and Pipper for those of you scoring along at home) Most of the pronouncements she makes in the interview are only slightly less inane than the kinds of crap Berlusconi comes up with, so they would probably be intellectually compatible. We know Silvio likes 18 year olds. We also know that Silvio is now single, and so is Bristol. (her former fiancé Levi and her split up, in case you don’t follow such things as closely as I do) Berlusconi has a media empire. Bristol likes to pose for photo shoots and give interviews. Then of course there are the right wing political ties. Don’t tell me that they couldn’t form some kind of right wing axis of weasles.
According to the Italian newspaper La Republica, Berlusconi first met Letizia at a New Years Eve bash Berlusconi hosted last year. Supposedly Silvio saw her photo in a magazine, found her telephone number and dialed her directly to invite her to the party. Super Silvio supposedly invited 30 other young, attractive single women to this party as well. Good old Silvio. So what about Silvio and Bristol? Bristol is on the cover of this week People magazine wearing her graduation cap and gown and posing with her 5 month old baby, Tripp. (Tripp’s aunts and uncles names are Trigg, Track, Willow and Pipper for those of you scoring along at home) Most of the pronouncements she makes in the interview are only slightly less inane than the kinds of crap Berlusconi comes up with, so they would probably be intellectually compatible. We know Silvio likes 18 year olds. We also know that Silvio is now single, and so is Bristol. (her former fiancé Levi and her split up, in case you don’t follow such things as closely as I do) Berlusconi has a media empire. Bristol likes to pose for photo shoots and give interviews. Then of course there are the right wing political ties. Don’t tell me that they couldn’t form some kind of right wing axis of weasles.
Leo Keeps On Truckin
We used to hear the words “mama, mama” droning through the tiny speakers of our bedroom baby monitors like clockwork sometime between 6 and 6.30 each morning. Leo is 20 months old now, and more frequently we’ll hear the words, “truck, truck!” The boy has a single-minded obsession with trucks. You know how they say that men think about sex something like once every 12 seconds? Well Leo thinks about trucks just as often. From the moment he wakes up, until bed time when he makes his last desperate pleas to just watch one more truck video, or look at one more book about trucks, the boy lives for trucks.
We got him one particular truck video from the library called “20 Trucks” which he’d be quite content to watch all day if we’d only let him. Leo already knows how to put a DVD in the player, so if we won’t put it in for him after he whines “truuuucccckkk, truuuuuuuuuuuuaaaahcccck”, “get …truck… on” 50 times, he tries to take matters into his own hands. One of the twenty trucks- #18 to be precise-is the most exalted and glorious of all trucks, the monster truck. Leo is mesmerized by scenes of monster truck carnage- he particularly likes a scene where a monster truck named Bigfoot smashes a bunch of parked cars. He likes to say “mons, mons” meaning, go back to the scene with the monster trucks. The DVD has a theme song which haunts me in my sleep……
Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can. Come on and try it now- lets all clap our hands! A tractor-trailer hauls a heavy load, a great big snowplow cleans snow off the road, I see a dump truck, its bed goes up and down! There goes a bus-taking people through the town; The Cee-ment mixers drum spins round, and round and round!
Man, I am such a loser for knowing the words to this song. Welcome to parenthood. No idea why the singer pronounces cement as See-ment, but you realize we are not dealing with a Lenin/McCartney wordsmith here.
Since the boy loves his trucks so much, I’ve resolved to take the boy to a live monster truck race soon. Luckily, we live right near Indiana, so we’re in a monster truck hotbed here in the Midwest.
He’s the proud owner of a huge variety of trucks himself- dump trucks, garbage trucks, pickup trucks, tractors, fire trucks, jeeps, tankers, and forklifts. You name the truck, and Leo’s got one. At least. He’s so proud of his fleet that he loves to walk up to strangers and hand them one of his trucks for their approval.
Recently, he sat in another kids toy car at the playground and wouldn’t get out of it, so we went to one of the most dismal places in the world- Toys R Us- to get him the same one. Toy stores should be fun places- we have a small independent store in nearby Oak Park that is great, they actually have lots of toys out for kids to play with. The only problem with them is that they only have high quality toys that appeal more to adults than to children. Toys R Us, on the other hand, pretty much just has row after row of boxes of crap. All made in China, and yet completely irresistible to a 20 month old. For some reason the Toys R Us near our house is always filled with people who look like they might be carrying some kind of developing-world communicable disease (I swear that the swine flu actually started at this store, but no one believes me), and the people who work there are surly and ignorant. Welcome to Toys R Us; now leave us the fuck alone. We brought Leo to the area of the store with the large sit-in toy cars, and, predictably, he was most taken with the largest and most ostentatious and expensive one- a $399 Hummer! We got him the equivalent of a Yugo for $40 and slunk out, reassuring him that it would get much better gas mileage. What a country we live in.
Leo’s a lot like his dad in many ways- he’s impatient, has a short attention span, is prone to rude or simply irrationally angry outbursts, blunt honesty, impetuous behavior, and likes to demand things he doesn’t need- but, unlike his dad, he still believes in the inherent good nature of humanity. He’s more than happy to amble up to even the most dangerous looking vagrant and say, “hi!” Most adults are quite nice to him, but not all kids are.
We accompany Leo to the playground every day and enjoy observing him with the other kids, most of whom are older than him. Sometimes it breaks our hearts though to see him approach other kids and enthusiastically say, “hi!” only to be ignored, or worse, told to get lost or pushed away. It probably doesn’t help that we live in a high-income neighborhood- don’t ask me what we’re doing here- with a high spoiled brat quotient. Leo is treated like such a prince at home, and by nearly every adult he sees, so he perceives the world to be his oyster and is surprised when he’s rebuffed by other kids. Nonetheless, he takes it in stride, even if he has to pick himself up off the ground after being bowled over by an older or bigger kid. We’re the ones that get our feelings hurt, not him.
Leo’s second obsession after trucks is his mom’s pregnant belly, which has now swelled to a 6-month bulge. “Tummy, tummy,” he’ll say, even if we are in a public place, meaning that he wants my wife, Jen, to lift her shirt and let him cuddle up against her stomach. He used to be obsessed with two body parts right above the tummy, and occasionally he still is, so the tummy kick is a welcome break for his mom.
Everyone knows that I have a penchant for using foul language at times, and Jen has been particularly concerned that Leo would pick up on some bad words. She herself rarely swears, so I took particular pleasure in the fact that she slipped up first, before me, a few weeks back. She said, “shit”, and he repeated it. He doesn’t use the word often, but he does use it judiciously and on appropriate occasions. For example, one afternoon he was watching his beloved truck DVD on a laptop while tapping away at the keyboard randomly. Eventually he pressed a key that stopped his video and we heard him say, “oh shit.” His non-swear word vocabulary has also been growing by leaps and bounds. He likes to say “ no money” and “no candy” even though he really likes both money and candy.
I can’t say that Leo is much of a gourmand, but he does like some unusual dishes for a boy his age: hummus, guacamole, trade joe’s chicken curry sticks, and pasta with pesto sauce are a few of his favorites. One of his favorite tricks is to say, “all done!” as soon as we put him in his chair before he’s even eaten anything. If this doesn’t work he’ll try to demand a Starburst fruit chew, a cookie or an ice cream cone. We used to be able to take Leo out to eat, but these days it’s a bit of a lost cause, because we end up spending most of the meal policing him as he runs rampant around the restaurant. As soon as he’s had enough of whatever he’s eating, he immediately wants out of his hi-chair and will start demanding, “go, go!”
Leo is also an extraordinarily delightful young chap who will gladly come by for a hug, and will occasionally even call us “cute.” We have a nice little mutual admiration society, just the three of us, and Leo gets along with everyone, especially people who can name at least 20 trucks. Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can.
We got him one particular truck video from the library called “20 Trucks” which he’d be quite content to watch all day if we’d only let him. Leo already knows how to put a DVD in the player, so if we won’t put it in for him after he whines “truuuucccckkk, truuuuuuuuuuuuaaaahcccck”, “get …truck… on” 50 times, he tries to take matters into his own hands. One of the twenty trucks- #18 to be precise-is the most exalted and glorious of all trucks, the monster truck. Leo is mesmerized by scenes of monster truck carnage- he particularly likes a scene where a monster truck named Bigfoot smashes a bunch of parked cars. He likes to say “mons, mons” meaning, go back to the scene with the monster trucks. The DVD has a theme song which haunts me in my sleep……
Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can. Come on and try it now- lets all clap our hands! A tractor-trailer hauls a heavy load, a great big snowplow cleans snow off the road, I see a dump truck, its bed goes up and down! There goes a bus-taking people through the town; The Cee-ment mixers drum spins round, and round and round!
Man, I am such a loser for knowing the words to this song. Welcome to parenthood. No idea why the singer pronounces cement as See-ment, but you realize we are not dealing with a Lenin/McCartney wordsmith here.
Since the boy loves his trucks so much, I’ve resolved to take the boy to a live monster truck race soon. Luckily, we live right near Indiana, so we’re in a monster truck hotbed here in the Midwest.
He’s the proud owner of a huge variety of trucks himself- dump trucks, garbage trucks, pickup trucks, tractors, fire trucks, jeeps, tankers, and forklifts. You name the truck, and Leo’s got one. At least. He’s so proud of his fleet that he loves to walk up to strangers and hand them one of his trucks for their approval.
Recently, he sat in another kids toy car at the playground and wouldn’t get out of it, so we went to one of the most dismal places in the world- Toys R Us- to get him the same one. Toy stores should be fun places- we have a small independent store in nearby Oak Park that is great, they actually have lots of toys out for kids to play with. The only problem with them is that they only have high quality toys that appeal more to adults than to children. Toys R Us, on the other hand, pretty much just has row after row of boxes of crap. All made in China, and yet completely irresistible to a 20 month old. For some reason the Toys R Us near our house is always filled with people who look like they might be carrying some kind of developing-world communicable disease (I swear that the swine flu actually started at this store, but no one believes me), and the people who work there are surly and ignorant. Welcome to Toys R Us; now leave us the fuck alone. We brought Leo to the area of the store with the large sit-in toy cars, and, predictably, he was most taken with the largest and most ostentatious and expensive one- a $399 Hummer! We got him the equivalent of a Yugo for $40 and slunk out, reassuring him that it would get much better gas mileage. What a country we live in.
Leo’s a lot like his dad in many ways- he’s impatient, has a short attention span, is prone to rude or simply irrationally angry outbursts, blunt honesty, impetuous behavior, and likes to demand things he doesn’t need- but, unlike his dad, he still believes in the inherent good nature of humanity. He’s more than happy to amble up to even the most dangerous looking vagrant and say, “hi!” Most adults are quite nice to him, but not all kids are.
We accompany Leo to the playground every day and enjoy observing him with the other kids, most of whom are older than him. Sometimes it breaks our hearts though to see him approach other kids and enthusiastically say, “hi!” only to be ignored, or worse, told to get lost or pushed away. It probably doesn’t help that we live in a high-income neighborhood- don’t ask me what we’re doing here- with a high spoiled brat quotient. Leo is treated like such a prince at home, and by nearly every adult he sees, so he perceives the world to be his oyster and is surprised when he’s rebuffed by other kids. Nonetheless, he takes it in stride, even if he has to pick himself up off the ground after being bowled over by an older or bigger kid. We’re the ones that get our feelings hurt, not him.
Leo’s second obsession after trucks is his mom’s pregnant belly, which has now swelled to a 6-month bulge. “Tummy, tummy,” he’ll say, even if we are in a public place, meaning that he wants my wife, Jen, to lift her shirt and let him cuddle up against her stomach. He used to be obsessed with two body parts right above the tummy, and occasionally he still is, so the tummy kick is a welcome break for his mom.
Everyone knows that I have a penchant for using foul language at times, and Jen has been particularly concerned that Leo would pick up on some bad words. She herself rarely swears, so I took particular pleasure in the fact that she slipped up first, before me, a few weeks back. She said, “shit”, and he repeated it. He doesn’t use the word often, but he does use it judiciously and on appropriate occasions. For example, one afternoon he was watching his beloved truck DVD on a laptop while tapping away at the keyboard randomly. Eventually he pressed a key that stopped his video and we heard him say, “oh shit.” His non-swear word vocabulary has also been growing by leaps and bounds. He likes to say “ no money” and “no candy” even though he really likes both money and candy.
I can’t say that Leo is much of a gourmand, but he does like some unusual dishes for a boy his age: hummus, guacamole, trade joe’s chicken curry sticks, and pasta with pesto sauce are a few of his favorites. One of his favorite tricks is to say, “all done!” as soon as we put him in his chair before he’s even eaten anything. If this doesn’t work he’ll try to demand a Starburst fruit chew, a cookie or an ice cream cone. We used to be able to take Leo out to eat, but these days it’s a bit of a lost cause, because we end up spending most of the meal policing him as he runs rampant around the restaurant. As soon as he’s had enough of whatever he’s eating, he immediately wants out of his hi-chair and will start demanding, “go, go!”
Leo is also an extraordinarily delightful young chap who will gladly come by for a hug, and will occasionally even call us “cute.” We have a nice little mutual admiration society, just the three of us, and Leo gets along with everyone, especially people who can name at least 20 trucks. Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Do you Speak Fluent Hungarian, Macedonian, Dutch, Slovene, Bosnian and Spanish?
Looking for a job is frustrating, but also, at times, hillarious. Take for example, this advertisement (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wl/jobs/JS_JobSearchDetail?jobid=27889751&jobSummaryIndex=0&agentID=&xfeed=1&tid=244&wpmk=MK0000004&GCID=C17812x033-Other&keyword=no_keyword) for an analyst position at Georgetown University's Imaging Science and Information Center. Did you notice this kicker of a sentence: "Excellent writing skills in Hungarian, Dutch, Macedonian, Bosnian, Slovenian, Spanish, and excellent communication skills, and self-motivation are required." OK, I think I have the communication skills and self-motivation part covered- and i feel fairly confident that anyone that speaks all of those languages is fairly self-motivated and has communication skills- but is there any human being on earth that can speak all of these disparate languages? There are definitely Macedonians who can also speak Bosnian and Slovene, and vice versa- but can those people also speak Dutch, Hungarian and Spanish? And are they looking for a low paying job at Georgetown University?
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Warm Tropical Breezes Inside a Mexican Taxi Cab
This is a story about air-conditioning, or, more broadly, an episode from one day of our recent trip to Mexico that highlights some of the cultural differences that exist between our two nations. It all started with a Martin Lawrence movie. A really bad one (are there any other kind?). My wife, Jen, my 17-month-old son, Leo, and I were on a Primera Plus “first class” bus that had originated in Guanajuato and was heading to San Miguel de Allende. “First Class” in this context meant semi-functional air conditioning, no livestock visible in the cabin, brightly upholstered seats largely free of vomit stains, a free boxed lunch complete with a Frankenstein like mystery meat sandwich on months old knock-off wonder bread, and “entertainment.” By “entertainment” I mean six TV screens placed strategically around the bus so that anyone attempting to read, sleep, think, converse, or simply hide from the onslaught of programming would surely give up in frustration.
The ear-splitting volume of the film on offer was the first thing I noticed when we boarded the bus. The movie- it may have been “Rebound” but I can’t be sure- was already in progress, and yet, despite all the noise, most of the handful of passengers seemed to be either sleeping or trying to sleep. Most American movies are dubbed into Spanish for the Mexican market, and this one was no different. Jen and I were hoping that Leo would be able to nap on the 75 minute ride to San Miguel- we were planning just a day trip and hoped a nap would be just the thing to get him through the experience. I saw our bus driver chatting away with another driver amicably outside- despite the fact that it was already ten minutes past our scheduled departure time- and asked him in broken Spanish if we could lower the volume of the film. He did not say “si” or “no”, he simply looked at me dismissively.
I can’t be sure that the driver actually increased the volume of the film, once he finally deigned to board and commence our trip, but it sure seemed that way as I slumped down in my seat and tried to hide from Martin Lawrence and company. Unable to read, sleep, or hear much of what my wife was saying, I succumbed and watched a bit of the film. My Spanish is quite basic, but I got the gist- Martin was the coach of some kind of youth sports team that, despite low expectations, had overcome obstacles and led his team to an improbable victory over a better opponent. When the closing credits came on, I nearly cried tears of joy- not because I was so happy for Martin’s team, but because I thought that there wouldn’t be enough time left in the journey for the driver to inflict another film on us.
We enjoyed perhaps 60 seconds of blissful silence- by this time my son had fallen asleep but I was too agitated to do anything more than squirm in my seat- before our reverie came to a crashing halt as the sadistic driver treated us to Mexican cartoons at a volume that even the hard of hearing would object to. I appealed to a Mexican businessman who was sitting across from us. “Yes, its too loud,” he conceded, “but the driver is in control- there is nothing we can do!” I had been hoping he’d take the issue up with the driver, but his fatalistic approach to the problem reminded me of the difference between the American approach to nuisances and the approach you encounter in many other countries around the world, Mexico included. Americans think that they can at least endeavor to resolve any problem- be it a minor discomfort or a major irritant, but in many other parts of the world, the attitude is something akin to- let’s just grin and bear it, life is tough and we have no expectation of comfort.
I’ve always disliked bus travel, as I find it confining and rarely comfortable- but being forced to listen to loud Spanish language cartoons elevated my distaste for bus travel to new heights. I resolved to find a different way- any way- to return to Guanajuato later that afternoon.
Our knight in shining armor arrived in the form of a gleaming new VW taxi that took us from the bus station into the center of San Miguel de Allende. By this point in our Mexican adventure, we had traveled in at least a dozen Mexican taxi’s in Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara and Guanajuato, and had only been in a cab with A/C on one occasion. Nearly all the cabs we’d been in were the Mexican equivalent of a mid to late 80’s Nissan Sentra, but this was something akin to a brand new VW Jetta. The English-speaking driver (another first), one Senor Gonzalez had his own business card and boasted that he could take us back to Guanajuato- in complete silence- for only about $10 more than the bus tickets would cost us.
San Miguel de Allende has been accused of being essentially an Epcot-center-like pavilion of Mexican culture, long on color and charm but short on authenticity. The very fact that we’d been picked up by an English speaking, air-con using driver in a new car seemed a testament to this notion, but we weren’t complaining. There are so many elderly American snowbirds in San Miguel, that it does rather have the vibe of an American retirement community, albeit one with substantially more Mexican restaurants, souvenir stands and aggressive beggars. It is still a very pleasant place- with interesting churches, good food, and colonial-era architecture.
Leo had seen enough of San Miguel after a few hours, so we asked the waiter at Ten Ten Pie, a nice little taco place near the cathedral, to call Senor Gonzalez to come pick us up in his dream machine. Twenty minutes later a dilapidated old Nissan Sentra came sputtering up to the restaurant. Much to my dismay, he was looking for us. Senor Gonzalez was sick, he claimed. I pointed to the air vents in the car and asked if he had A/C. It was about 90 degrees and the oppressive sun had worn all three of us down. The driver assured us that he had A/C and turned it on full blast to demonstrate. Nothing but an avalanche of very hot air came out. Just wait, it takes time he said.
Five minutes into our trip, we were still broiling. It was clear that our new ride had no A/C. Suddenly the whole notion of paying more to take a taxi back to Guanajuato didn’t seem so ingenious any more. For all of Primera Plus’s faults- and there were many- they did at least have A/C. I tried to calculate what was preferable- a silent, yet sweltering ride in a battered old cab, or a cooler, noiser ride on a bus.
“Call Senor Gonzalez and ask him if you can use his car to drive us,” I asked.
The driver called someone, but claimed this was impossible. Irritated at this obvious bait and switch scam, and with beads of sweat poring down my back, I instructed our driver to take us to the San Miguel bus station. He very grudgingly complied, but when we pulled up, the place seemed deserted, so I instructed Jen and Leo to wait in the car while I jumped out, and determined that the next bus for Guanajuato left in nearly two hours on the dreaded Primera Plus line. So the option was continue on with an angry driver in his sweltering hot car in the middle of the afternoon in the scorching sun, or sit with a crabby, tired 17 month old child in an un-air-conditioned bus station for nearly two hours only to wait for a bus that would no doubt feature blaring, bad American movies dubbed into Spanish, and perhaps Mexican cartoons as well.
It was a no brainer- so I sheepishly told the drive to take us on to Guanajuato. He’d had it with us by that point, but wasn’t about to kick us out of his cab either. As soon as we got outside of town and our driver was able to put the peddle to the metal, I immediately began to question my decision to entrust this man with our lives. A confluence of factors seemed to be working against us- our driver was clearly insane to begin with, he was trying to make up time lost on the bus station detour, and he was obviously angry with us and worn down from my complaints about the lack of A/C and the bait and switch auto scheme.
As unpleasant as the trip to San Miguel had been on Primera Plus, I had not noticed how curvy the road was. I’ve had many bad cab driver in my life- Cairo certainly stands out as one place where I remember particularly risky drivers- but our driver on this afternoon was driving with a vengeance- accelerating into hair raising curves on lonely, high elevation roads with no guard rails. I looked in the back seat and saw that Leo was sleeping on his mother’s lap (no seat belts in the back seat), his hair fluttering in the hot breeze that whipped in through the open windows. I couldn’t help but think of what an irresponsible parent I was, and how miserable it would be to die in a musty old Nissan Sentra on one of Mexico’s forlorn byways. Instead of asking him to slow down- I made a show of clutching onto the hand rests when he’d fly around a dangerous curve at top speed, and occasionally would hold my hands up in front of my chest, as if to brace myself for a trip through the windshield.
Despite how fast the driver was going, and how he’d aggressively pass two or three trucks at a time- often on blind curves and uphill portions of the road- the ride seemed to be taking forever. My t-shirt was soaked with perspiration and no matter which way we turned, I always seemed to have the sun beating right on me. We passed through a dry, mocha colored, desolate landscape- if the car broke down, we’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no garages around for many miles. It looked like the kind of place where one could easily die of thirst.
Miraculously we reached what seemed to be the outskirts of Guanajuato alive, but just as I began to practically taste the comforts of our hotel room, the sounds of a police siren poisoned my brightening mood. The driver pulled to the side of the road and turned off the motor. I was literally baking in the hot sun, and braced myself for a lengthy delay. Even though I was obviously displeased by the turn of events, I felt somewhat vindicated by the police action- our man had been driving like a maniac and richly deserved to be ticketed.
My hombre stepped out of the cab and met two officers just a few feet behind the car. I could see them in the mirror and could make out some of the Spanish language conversation that ensued. The police claimed he was going 90 in a 40 zone, although I think their estimate of his speed was charitable. Our driver unleashed his entire afternoon of frustration on the cops- the word “gringos” was thrown about liberally, and each time he used it, I detected looks of empathy and knowing nods of concern from the officers. I picked up enough of the Spanish to understand the crux of his defense: he had no choice but to speed because the gringos were angry about his non-functioning air conditioning. The whole thing was our fault. After making his closing arguments, the driver jogged back to the cab, grabbed a fistful of pesos ( I couldn’t tell how much) from a secret hiding spot underneath the wheel. The cops were paid, and off we went, not two minutes after the initial stop.
The driver peeled out, squealing tires and all, and zoomed off, leaving the cops in a storm of dust. If he was angry before, now he was livid, and seemed determined to drive us over a cliff, or perhaps into a tree. Somehow we arrived in the city intact, and it was obvious that the driver had no idea how to find our hotel, so I gladly agreed to get out and walk the rest of the way-so relieved was I to be alive and out of his greenhouse like sweatshop of a car. I paid the man and he roared off without comment or thanks. He was so mad he could hardly look us in the eyes. Whatever profit he was to make from the trip, had surely been eroded by the bribe he had to pay to mollify the police. Somehow, despite the fact that our driver had been going at least twice as fast as the bus, it had actually taken us 10 minutes longer to ride in his cab than it had to take the bus. I can only guess that he took a more circuitous route to avoid tolls.
Looking back on the incident- and I began to do so as soon as we left his cab- I couldn’t help but feel compelled by the fact that our disparate cultures and upbringings caused us both to conclude that we were the aggrieved parties. We were angry because we’d negotiated a price to ride in comfort with A/C in a new car, and that wasn’t we got. In his mind, he surely thought- I ride around in this old car without A/C every day, why can’t they just deal with it for an hour or so? The sun also probably did not feel that hot to him- he was used to it, and was not sweating like I was. Because we were on vacation, we felt as though we were entitled to a relaxing, comfortable trip, but certainly his perspective was: what do these rich gringos have to complain about? They are enjoying a nice holiday while I’m stuck here driving in this shitty old cab to make a living. In some ways, we were both right, but what I can definitively conclude from the experience is that comfort is always relative, safety is a state of mind, and silence is golden. Especially when Martin Lawrence is involved.
The ear-splitting volume of the film on offer was the first thing I noticed when we boarded the bus. The movie- it may have been “Rebound” but I can’t be sure- was already in progress, and yet, despite all the noise, most of the handful of passengers seemed to be either sleeping or trying to sleep. Most American movies are dubbed into Spanish for the Mexican market, and this one was no different. Jen and I were hoping that Leo would be able to nap on the 75 minute ride to San Miguel- we were planning just a day trip and hoped a nap would be just the thing to get him through the experience. I saw our bus driver chatting away with another driver amicably outside- despite the fact that it was already ten minutes past our scheduled departure time- and asked him in broken Spanish if we could lower the volume of the film. He did not say “si” or “no”, he simply looked at me dismissively.
I can’t be sure that the driver actually increased the volume of the film, once he finally deigned to board and commence our trip, but it sure seemed that way as I slumped down in my seat and tried to hide from Martin Lawrence and company. Unable to read, sleep, or hear much of what my wife was saying, I succumbed and watched a bit of the film. My Spanish is quite basic, but I got the gist- Martin was the coach of some kind of youth sports team that, despite low expectations, had overcome obstacles and led his team to an improbable victory over a better opponent. When the closing credits came on, I nearly cried tears of joy- not because I was so happy for Martin’s team, but because I thought that there wouldn’t be enough time left in the journey for the driver to inflict another film on us.
We enjoyed perhaps 60 seconds of blissful silence- by this time my son had fallen asleep but I was too agitated to do anything more than squirm in my seat- before our reverie came to a crashing halt as the sadistic driver treated us to Mexican cartoons at a volume that even the hard of hearing would object to. I appealed to a Mexican businessman who was sitting across from us. “Yes, its too loud,” he conceded, “but the driver is in control- there is nothing we can do!” I had been hoping he’d take the issue up with the driver, but his fatalistic approach to the problem reminded me of the difference between the American approach to nuisances and the approach you encounter in many other countries around the world, Mexico included. Americans think that they can at least endeavor to resolve any problem- be it a minor discomfort or a major irritant, but in many other parts of the world, the attitude is something akin to- let’s just grin and bear it, life is tough and we have no expectation of comfort.
I’ve always disliked bus travel, as I find it confining and rarely comfortable- but being forced to listen to loud Spanish language cartoons elevated my distaste for bus travel to new heights. I resolved to find a different way- any way- to return to Guanajuato later that afternoon.
Our knight in shining armor arrived in the form of a gleaming new VW taxi that took us from the bus station into the center of San Miguel de Allende. By this point in our Mexican adventure, we had traveled in at least a dozen Mexican taxi’s in Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara and Guanajuato, and had only been in a cab with A/C on one occasion. Nearly all the cabs we’d been in were the Mexican equivalent of a mid to late 80’s Nissan Sentra, but this was something akin to a brand new VW Jetta. The English-speaking driver (another first), one Senor Gonzalez had his own business card and boasted that he could take us back to Guanajuato- in complete silence- for only about $10 more than the bus tickets would cost us.
San Miguel de Allende has been accused of being essentially an Epcot-center-like pavilion of Mexican culture, long on color and charm but short on authenticity. The very fact that we’d been picked up by an English speaking, air-con using driver in a new car seemed a testament to this notion, but we weren’t complaining. There are so many elderly American snowbirds in San Miguel, that it does rather have the vibe of an American retirement community, albeit one with substantially more Mexican restaurants, souvenir stands and aggressive beggars. It is still a very pleasant place- with interesting churches, good food, and colonial-era architecture.
Leo had seen enough of San Miguel after a few hours, so we asked the waiter at Ten Ten Pie, a nice little taco place near the cathedral, to call Senor Gonzalez to come pick us up in his dream machine. Twenty minutes later a dilapidated old Nissan Sentra came sputtering up to the restaurant. Much to my dismay, he was looking for us. Senor Gonzalez was sick, he claimed. I pointed to the air vents in the car and asked if he had A/C. It was about 90 degrees and the oppressive sun had worn all three of us down. The driver assured us that he had A/C and turned it on full blast to demonstrate. Nothing but an avalanche of very hot air came out. Just wait, it takes time he said.
Five minutes into our trip, we were still broiling. It was clear that our new ride had no A/C. Suddenly the whole notion of paying more to take a taxi back to Guanajuato didn’t seem so ingenious any more. For all of Primera Plus’s faults- and there were many- they did at least have A/C. I tried to calculate what was preferable- a silent, yet sweltering ride in a battered old cab, or a cooler, noiser ride on a bus.
“Call Senor Gonzalez and ask him if you can use his car to drive us,” I asked.
The driver called someone, but claimed this was impossible. Irritated at this obvious bait and switch scam, and with beads of sweat poring down my back, I instructed our driver to take us to the San Miguel bus station. He very grudgingly complied, but when we pulled up, the place seemed deserted, so I instructed Jen and Leo to wait in the car while I jumped out, and determined that the next bus for Guanajuato left in nearly two hours on the dreaded Primera Plus line. So the option was continue on with an angry driver in his sweltering hot car in the middle of the afternoon in the scorching sun, or sit with a crabby, tired 17 month old child in an un-air-conditioned bus station for nearly two hours only to wait for a bus that would no doubt feature blaring, bad American movies dubbed into Spanish, and perhaps Mexican cartoons as well.
It was a no brainer- so I sheepishly told the drive to take us on to Guanajuato. He’d had it with us by that point, but wasn’t about to kick us out of his cab either. As soon as we got outside of town and our driver was able to put the peddle to the metal, I immediately began to question my decision to entrust this man with our lives. A confluence of factors seemed to be working against us- our driver was clearly insane to begin with, he was trying to make up time lost on the bus station detour, and he was obviously angry with us and worn down from my complaints about the lack of A/C and the bait and switch auto scheme.
As unpleasant as the trip to San Miguel had been on Primera Plus, I had not noticed how curvy the road was. I’ve had many bad cab driver in my life- Cairo certainly stands out as one place where I remember particularly risky drivers- but our driver on this afternoon was driving with a vengeance- accelerating into hair raising curves on lonely, high elevation roads with no guard rails. I looked in the back seat and saw that Leo was sleeping on his mother’s lap (no seat belts in the back seat), his hair fluttering in the hot breeze that whipped in through the open windows. I couldn’t help but think of what an irresponsible parent I was, and how miserable it would be to die in a musty old Nissan Sentra on one of Mexico’s forlorn byways. Instead of asking him to slow down- I made a show of clutching onto the hand rests when he’d fly around a dangerous curve at top speed, and occasionally would hold my hands up in front of my chest, as if to brace myself for a trip through the windshield.
Despite how fast the driver was going, and how he’d aggressively pass two or three trucks at a time- often on blind curves and uphill portions of the road- the ride seemed to be taking forever. My t-shirt was soaked with perspiration and no matter which way we turned, I always seemed to have the sun beating right on me. We passed through a dry, mocha colored, desolate landscape- if the car broke down, we’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no garages around for many miles. It looked like the kind of place where one could easily die of thirst.
Miraculously we reached what seemed to be the outskirts of Guanajuato alive, but just as I began to practically taste the comforts of our hotel room, the sounds of a police siren poisoned my brightening mood. The driver pulled to the side of the road and turned off the motor. I was literally baking in the hot sun, and braced myself for a lengthy delay. Even though I was obviously displeased by the turn of events, I felt somewhat vindicated by the police action- our man had been driving like a maniac and richly deserved to be ticketed.
My hombre stepped out of the cab and met two officers just a few feet behind the car. I could see them in the mirror and could make out some of the Spanish language conversation that ensued. The police claimed he was going 90 in a 40 zone, although I think their estimate of his speed was charitable. Our driver unleashed his entire afternoon of frustration on the cops- the word “gringos” was thrown about liberally, and each time he used it, I detected looks of empathy and knowing nods of concern from the officers. I picked up enough of the Spanish to understand the crux of his defense: he had no choice but to speed because the gringos were angry about his non-functioning air conditioning. The whole thing was our fault. After making his closing arguments, the driver jogged back to the cab, grabbed a fistful of pesos ( I couldn’t tell how much) from a secret hiding spot underneath the wheel. The cops were paid, and off we went, not two minutes after the initial stop.
The driver peeled out, squealing tires and all, and zoomed off, leaving the cops in a storm of dust. If he was angry before, now he was livid, and seemed determined to drive us over a cliff, or perhaps into a tree. Somehow we arrived in the city intact, and it was obvious that the driver had no idea how to find our hotel, so I gladly agreed to get out and walk the rest of the way-so relieved was I to be alive and out of his greenhouse like sweatshop of a car. I paid the man and he roared off without comment or thanks. He was so mad he could hardly look us in the eyes. Whatever profit he was to make from the trip, had surely been eroded by the bribe he had to pay to mollify the police. Somehow, despite the fact that our driver had been going at least twice as fast as the bus, it had actually taken us 10 minutes longer to ride in his cab than it had to take the bus. I can only guess that he took a more circuitous route to avoid tolls.
Looking back on the incident- and I began to do so as soon as we left his cab- I couldn’t help but feel compelled by the fact that our disparate cultures and upbringings caused us both to conclude that we were the aggrieved parties. We were angry because we’d negotiated a price to ride in comfort with A/C in a new car, and that wasn’t we got. In his mind, he surely thought- I ride around in this old car without A/C every day, why can’t they just deal with it for an hour or so? The sun also probably did not feel that hot to him- he was used to it, and was not sweating like I was. Because we were on vacation, we felt as though we were entitled to a relaxing, comfortable trip, but certainly his perspective was: what do these rich gringos have to complain about? They are enjoying a nice holiday while I’m stuck here driving in this shitty old cab to make a living. In some ways, we were both right, but what I can definitively conclude from the experience is that comfort is always relative, safety is a state of mind, and silence is golden. Especially when Martin Lawrence is involved.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel's Appetite for Destruction
Israel’s violent assault on the Gaza Strip and the repugnant complicity of the United States in sanctioning Israel’s actions undermines America’s already diminished moral authority in the world, damages the West’s ability to confront international terrorism, and jeopardizes Israel’s long term security interests. The current offensive in Gaza is certainly not the first time Israel has committed atrocities against Palestinian civilians, and the United Stated has long been complicit in condoning and even supporting Israel’s reprehensible response to perceived threats from the Palestinians. Yet the scope and scale of Israel’s current rampage against Gaza a low point in the recent history of both Israel and the United States, particularly vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the wider Arab world.
Murder Incorporated
A comparison of the bloodshed on both sides of the current conflict shows a stunning disparity in the level of casualties and exposes how utterly disproportionate Israel’s response to Hamas’ patchwork rockets has been. Israel has killed nearly twenty times more Palestinians (more than 1,000 and counting with nearly 5,000 injured, including 346 children dead and another 1,709 children wounded according to the United Nations as of January 15, 2009) in just the first fortnight of its assault on the Gaza Strip compared to the last two years worth of Israeli casualties at the hands of Palestinian terror attacks (49 dead in 2007-8 ). Twice as many Palestinians were killed on the very first day of Israel’s rampage (250-300) compared to the number of Israelis killed over the last four years in terror attacks. (116) Thus far, four Israeli civilians have been killed in the conflict, with approximately 78 people wounded . Far more Israelis die each year from traffic accidents than from Hamas rockets. For example, in 2005, the number of Israeli victims of “terror attacks” was less than 10% of the number of traffic fatalities . In 2008 the number of Israeli victims of terror attacks was once again less than 10% of the number killed in traffic accidents, with more than 400 people were killed in road accidents , compared to 36 Israelis killed in terror attacks . Let me be clear- every death is one too many, but it’s important to put the level of violence in context in order to understand how utterly inappropriate Israel’s response is in this situation.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Israel speciously claims that its bloody offensive against the Gaza Strip is a response to rocket fire from Hamas, but even if this were true, which it is not, the response would be wildly disproportionate, as Hamas rocket fire has resulted in less than two dozen Israeli fatalities over the last eight years according to Israeli human rights groups. The truth is that Israel has been planning this attack for more than six months- even as Israel was negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Hamas - and long before the Israelis themselves violated a four month long ceasefire with Hamas on November 4 by assassinating 6 Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip . Note the significance of the date the Israelis chose to break the ceasefire- November 4 was the date of the U.S. Presidential election- certainly the best day of the year to commit acts you don’t want the international community to notice. Just as the timing of the November 4 attack was no accident, the timing of the current offensive- just before the Israeli election and prior to the inauguration of Barrack Obama- is obviously calculated and not a swift reaction to Hamas rocket fire.
Hamas predictably retaliated for the November 4 strike against its members, but its worth noting that Israel assassinated dozens of Palestinians even during the four month period from mid-June to early November when Hamas wasn’t firing any rockets into Israel at all, and it has also assassinated numerous Palestinians on the West Bank- where no rockets have ever been launched from- including, Arafat Al Khawaja, an unarmed 22 year-old that was demonstrating against the assault on Gaza on December 27 . Even the Israeli Foreign Ministry acknowledges that there were virtually no rockets fired into Israel during the ceasefire, prior to their November 4 assault. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+since+2000/Missile+fire+from+Gaza+on+Israeli+civilian+targets+Aug+2007.htm#statistics
The fact that Israel and not the Palestinians violated this most recent ceasefire is part of a pattern of Israel stoking the conflict after periods of dormancy. A study conducted by Tel Aviv University, along with M.I.T. and other academic institutions looked at the last eight years of hostilities and concluded that Israel had unilaterally interrupted 96% of the 25 lulls in violence that lasted a week or more, and 100% of the 14 lulls in violence that lasted for at least 9 days.
What a Fool Believes
Over the last fortnight the Israeli government has served up several dubious claims regarding the background and conduct of the present conflict that need to be dispelled in order to understand the context of what is transpiring in Gaza.
The Song Remains the Same
1) Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip by “disengaging” from the territory three years ago- While it’s true that Israel dismantled its settlements in the Gaza Strip, it routinely enters the territory to conduct assassinations, home demolitions, and other operations. Israel has never truly “disengaged” from the territory or given the Gazans any measure of freedom- it retains control over land and sea borders and airspace, controlling the flow of people and products in and out of the Strip. No one can come or go from the Gaza Strip unless Israel grants them a permit, and Israel often inexplicably denies non-combatants with no criminal history the right to leave Gaza. For example, in July, Israeli officials denied exit permits to three students from Gaza that had won prestigious U.S. government funded Fulbright Scholarships to study in the United States, even after repeated pleas from American diplomats to let them travel to the United States .
This is not an isolated incident, as an article in the International Herald Tribune notes, hundreds of students in Gaza that have won scholarships to study abroad are unable to leave- not because they cannot secure the visas to study in foreign countries- but because Israel prefers to keep them as prisoners in the Gaza Strip. The bottom line is that Gazans have no more control over their lives now than they did prior to Israel’s “disengagement,” and, in fact, Israel has killed more than 1,300 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since disengagement, prior to the current round of fighting which commenced on December 27, including more than 250 children .
The Hustle
2) Instead of turning Gaza into a Dubai on the Mediterranean, Hamas has used the territory to terrorize Israel- The truth is that ever since Hamas won free and fair legislative elections in January 2006, Israel- behind America’s diplomatic bullying- has imposed collective punishment on the Gazans for voting for Hamas by imposing a harsh blockade that has made it impossible for adequate supplies of food, medicine and electricity to reach the Gaza Strip. Long before the present conflict, human rights groups warned that the blockade was having catastrophic effects on the public health and economy of Gaza, and were urging the Israeli government to halt this form of collective punishment. The group Physicians for Human Rights estimates that at least 200 Palestinians have died because Israel refused to allow them out of the Gaza Strip to seek medical care since the imposition of the blockade of Gaza. Halting the flow of food and medicine to civilians as a tool of war is a war crime and a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention. The U.S., for its part, not content to merely play its part in making life miserable in the Gaza Strip, took matters one step further with an Iran-contra-like plan to fund and arm militias to overthrow Hamas .
Aside from the obvious fact that trying to overturn the result of a democratic election undermines the U.S. claim that it’s trying to create a “New Middle East” where democracies replace dictators, the move didn’t work, and the U.S. attempts to topple Hamas only served to strengthen their popularity in the Gaza Strip and around the Arab World. The notion espoused by Thomas Friedman , and other official and un-official Israeli spokespersons that Gaza could “turn into a Dubai” while Israel strangles its economy and the U.S. cows the rest of the world into boycotting it is plainly absurd .
Blame if on the Rain
3) Israel is taking the utmost care in avoiding civilian casualties- Two weeks into the conflict, Israel has already killed at least 79 women, and 346 children, while wounding 1,709 children and 724 women and has killed an untold number of male non-combatants. Israel has also attacked U.N schools serving as safe-havens- in one case killing 3 and in another case killing 42 , a vegetable market ambulances , hospitals , U.N aid convoys, and the U.N. headquarters in Gaza. Israel initially tried to claim that Hamas was using the U.N protected school as a launching pad for mortar attacks, but after strenuous U.N denials, they eventually retracted their claim. Israel’s claims that Hamas is to blame whenever they commit an atrocity against an obviously civilian target remind one of Serbia’s similarly specious claims during the Balkan wars- claims that no one in the international community believed. The U.N. announced on January 8, that they’d have to suspend aid deliveries in the Gaza Strip due to the risk posed by the Israeli army, after a tank shell struck and killed the driver of a U.N aid convoy.
Aside from killing hundreds of civilians in Gaza, Israel is also guilty of deliberately preventing the Red Cross from assisting injured civilians trapped in the ruble of their demolished homes- in one case denying the Red Cross access for four days while soldiers were just meters away from people trying to get out from the wreckage of their homes. Numerous press reports, including a piece in the Washington Post , described a scene of utter carnage. “Emergency workers said they rescued 100 more trapped survivors Thursday and found between 40 and 50 corpses in a devastated residential block south of Gaza City that the Israeli military had kept off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross for four days…rescue workers found 16 bodies Wednesday in a large room of a house in Zaytoun: seven women, six children and three men, all members of the al-Samuni family. Most had sustained trauma injuries from shelling, but many had gunshot wounds as well... Four children, weak but alive, were found lying under blankets, nestled next to their dead mothers, Abuzaid said. Red Cross officials had said earlier that 12 adult bodies had been found in the house.”
Israel also has a history of using weapons banned under international law for use against civilian populations. For example, Human Rights Watch exhaustively documented Israel’s use of cluster bombs in civilian areas in Lebanon in 2006 in a 131 page report entitled, “Flooding South Lebanon: Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006. ” Human Rights watch is now pressing Israel to halt its use of white phosphorus- which can burn down houses and cause horrific burns on human skin. Hamas has, of course, also shown a blatant disregard for Israeli civilians, but fortunately, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal is extremely limited.
Beast of Burden
4) Israel is doing the U.S. a favor by taking on Hamas for us, in another front in the U.S.-led “War on Terror”- this claim has been made by not only the Israeli Foreign Ministry, but also by mainstream U.S. neo-cons like William Kristol in the New York Times- with Kristol going so far as to say that the U.S. should be “thanking Israel” rather than criticizing it. The truth is that Hamas is not part of Al Qaeda’s ideological war against the West-and has not specifically targeted U.S. interests the way Al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups have. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict is, at its heart, a dispute over a piece of land.
The only connection between the Israel- Palestinian conflict and the U.S. led war on terror is that our support for Israel and its violent colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip fuels anti-Americanism in the Arab world, contributes to the deterioration of our already battered image in the Middle East, and serves as a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda and other radical groups. For example, the BBC carried a story on January 12 featuring young Indonesian men that wanted to join the jihad against Israel and the United States in support of Gazans under siege. The story went on to quote an extremist group called the Islamic Defenders Front, which claims to have signed up 5,000 new recruit inspired by the Israeli atrocities in Gaza. In the wake of Barrack Obama’s historic election and the ensuing good feelings toward the United States following this remarkable event, Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip and the complicit U.S. response is a windfall for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. It is, essentially, a reminder to Muslims that while the face of leadership in America may be changing; America’s policies toward the Middle East may not. Rather than thanking Israel for its violent campaigns in the Occupied Territories, we should be condemning it, along with the rest of the world.
It Takes Two
Despite the lopsided disparity in casualty figures and the clear evidence of human rights violations by Israel in the Gaza Strip, most segments of the mainstream U.S. media continue to propagate the myth that both sides are equally to blame while urging a return to a failed peace process- which is really nothing more than a sad farce, whereby Israel goes through the motions while continuing to carve up more and more chunks of the West Bank. These tired pundits that implausibly cling to the two-state solution peace process mirage cannot seem to understand the key reason why Palestinians would support a movement which espouses armed resistance to Israel. Namely the fact that the settler population in the Occupied Territories has more than doubled since the start of the Oslo Peace Process and has continued to grow under successive Israeli governments. If the casualty figures in the present conflict were reversed and Hamas had killed hundreds of Israelis, with the Israelis killing only a handful of Palestinians, no American pundit that hoped to keep his job for long would be claiming that both sides were equally to blame.
Given the mainstream American media’s largely sympathetic pro-Israeli coverage, it’s easy to see how Americans could be confused as to who the victim and who the aggressor is in this conflict. Reports of Palestinian casualties often refer to the victims as “militants” – but its often unclear how the reporter has made this determination- and I suspect that they are often simply parroting whatever the Israeli military has claimed. The New York Times buried coverage of the deadly bombing at the school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for civilians on page 10. Is there any doubt that if a Hamas rocket killed 40 Israelis hiding in a school that the story would have been on the front page? For that matter, can anyone imagine the reaction of U.S. officials and the media if 1,000 Israelis had been killed thus far in this conflict and just a handful of Palestinians? Can anyone doubt that we’d be hearing calls for a U.S. military intervention to stop Hamas? Somehow we are a lot less concerned about 1,000 dead Palestinians whose lives aren’t worth as much as Israelis.
Sympathy for the Devil?
Yesterday I rode home from work on Chicago’s Metra commuter line and sat next to a middle aged woman that seemed visibly distraught by the stories she was reading on her laptop. After several loud, audible sighs, and one episode where she ostentatiously covered her eyes with her hands while tilting her head back to face the heavens, I looked down to see what website she was looking at. It was something called The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) website. My seat- mate was watching a video account of a rabbi’s report from what was billed as “War-Torn Israel.” I couldn’t hear the narrative because she had headphones on, but the images were not of the shattered homes, bodies in the streets and omnipresent rubble of Gaza, but instead scenes of rolling, verdant, bucolic hills in Israel. It looked more like the Sound of Music to me than a war zone. I then watched as she clicked into another page whose headline read, “I Survived a Hamas Rocket Attack!” After more audible sighs, I watched her click into a “Donate Now” page, which asks Americans to donate money- not to the tens of thousands of Gazans that are now homeless and in dire need of food and medicine, not to the Red Cross which is working around the clock to treat the thousands of seriously wounded Palestinians in the most primitively under funded hospitals and medical clinics imaginable, but to the Israeli victims of “Hamas terrorism.” While the IFCJ highlights its support to “victims of Hamas terrorism” it also, by its own admission, provides support to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which is perpetrating atrocities in Gaza, in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
Even though media reports have indicated that only four Israeli civilians have been killed in this conflict thus far, the IFCJ website reports that “thousands of Israelis have been injured and traumatized.” The United Nations has estimated that some 220 Israeli civilians have been injured, so one can only guess that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has thrown the word “traumatized” in there to cover what is an obviously misleading appeal. I’ve combed through this website and there is not a word of grief or regret or even a nugget of humanity expressed for the huge numbers of Palestinian dead and injured- and there are absolutely no appeals to help with the dire humanitarian crisis going on in the Gaza Strip.
More than a decade ago, during the devastating siege of Sarajevo, a Jewish friend and colleague of mine at the Chicago Tribune invited me to attend a United Jewish Appeal (UJA) event on the “humanitarian crisis in Bosnia.” My friend knew that I was interested in the situation in the Balkans, and the promotional flyer she forwarded me regarding the event looked interesting. The event turned out to be a 90 minute slideshow and presentation of how the UJA, along with other Jewish charities had helped members of Sarajevo’s tiny Jewish community move to Israel. At the end of the presentation, there was a pitch to donate money to help the remaining Jews in Bosnia. There was absolutely no mention of the genocidal campaign against Bosnian Muslims, or the plight of any other groups in Bosnia other than the Jews there. At the conclusion of the pitch, there was a lengthy question and answer session- and, given the fact that the promotional flyer had not mentioned that the presentation would be focused solely on Bosnia’s small Jewish community, I expected there to be some questions on the big picture situation in Bosnia. Yet, once again, all of the questions and discussion centered on the plight of Bosnia’s Jews.
I retell these stories to demonstrate the kind of dangerous, bunker mentality that can take hold amongst groups of embattled people that become capable of only seeing the suffering of their own kind. Those that focus solely on the suffering of people from their own race, religion or ethnic group aren’t bad people, and many groups are certainly guilty of this, but you have to feel depressed about the prospects for peace in the Holy Land when supporters of Israel can look at this conflict in Gaza and feel motivated to provide material support solely to the war machine that is responsible for committing more than 98% of the casualties. My point is not that fervent supporters of Israel are demonic, or even more hard-hearted than others, or that there are no Israeli victims of Hamas deserve sympathy or support. But when you look at the scale of the killing and the devastation in the already desperately poor Gaza Strip, and compare it with the minimal damage that Israel- a wealthy and advanced country- has suffered, and then conclude that it’s the Israelis who need your help, you are obviously completely immune to the suffering of the Palestinians.
There is no question that the legacy of the Holocaust looms large on the psyche of Israelis and their ardent supporters around the world. In their minds, Israel is the perennial victim no matter the facts of the situation. But at what point will the rest of the world, particularly the United States stop excusing Israel’s conduct and begin to treat it like any other nation that needs to abide by international law? Millions around the world are hoping that Barrack Obama will give Israel the tough love it desperately needs, but his campaign rhetoric is not encouraging on this score.
During a visit to Israel during the campaign, Obama was quoted as saying, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that… And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing,” Mr. Obama did not address how he or his daughters might feel about having their homes attacked by F-16’s, Apache helicopters and tanks. Also no mention of the fact that Israelis that are living in the towns being subjected to Hamas rockets have the freedom to travel to safe locations, whereas Gazans are trapped like prisoners in the Gaza Strip. The implication that somehow that the children of Israel are in more danger from Hamas rockets than the children of Gaza from the Israeli military- this despite the fact that more than 200 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military between 2006 and October 2008, while, during the same time frame, only five Israel children (still obviously 5 too many) were killed in Israel. Of course, if Mr. Obama had to move his family to either Israel or the Gaza Strip, one has to believe he’d take his chances against the Hamas rockets and move them to Israel. I certainly would.
Rocket Men
This conflict is not about Hamas rockets. Hamas has transformed itself from a mere armed resistance group into a political movement, though it still foolishly refuses to recognize Israel and continues to offer Israel the pretext for war it craves by firing its ineffectual homemade rockets into Israel. Israel does not want peace with Hamas no matter what the terms are- it wants to destroy Hamas, not make peace with it. The Israeli leadership believes that by hammering the Gazans they’ll succeed in cowing them into submission and turning them against Hamas. With an election looming on the horizon, Israeli leaders are all trying to slake the electorate’s thirst for vengeance.
But no matter how much force Israel uses in Gaza, they will not succeed in weakening Hamas, and, in fact, the harsher their response, the more likely Hamas will be strengthened. Most Gazans are part of very large, close- knit extended families with very extensive social circles, and nearly every man, woman and child that has been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces has brothers, parents, cousins, uncles and friends whose attitudes towards Israel will harden. The Palestinians are a resilient people, who are capable of enduring grave suffering and injustice. To think that they can be smashed into submission is foolhardy.
When Doves Cry
Two weeks prior to launching the present offensive in Gaza, Israel’s Foreign Minister was quoted as saying, “I will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Israeli Arabs, and tell them, 'your national solution lies elsewhere. '"
This is an astonishing, yet very calculated statement, in that, no candidate for high office with her level of political experience would make it unless they believed that the sentiment would appeal to a broad spectrum of the electorate. Livni is essentially saying that if the Palestinians get a state on the West Bank, then the Arab citizens of Israel- who make up 20% of the country- should be deported, or ethnically cleansed from the territory. This notion that non-Jewish Arab citizens should be driven out exposes the kind of deeply ingrained racism which allows the Israeli leadership to act as it is in the Gaza Strip at this moment.
Its important to remember that Livni is Israel’s top diplomat- its acting Foreign Minister- and, a leading presidential candidate, whom the international media has called the “dovish” candidate. This is not a far-right, fringe candidate- but rather someone firmly in the center-left spectrum of Israeli politics. Can one imagine the reaction if Condoleeza Rice had opined that American citizens of Hispanic descent (not illegal immigrants, but actual U.S. citizens) should plan their future in Mexico?
Gimme Shelter
As the United States stands by and applauds while Israel stubbornly presses on with its lethal assault in Gaza, in the teeth of a nearly unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire (the U.S. voted “present” after squelching earlier, stronger statements against Israeli aggression), it is difficult to imagine what Israel would have to do in order to draw U.S. condemnation. Perhaps Israel would need to commit a thoroughly comprehensive genocide, effectively “cleansing” the entire Occupied Territories of Palestinians once and for all, in order to rupture the U.S.- Israel alliance. In human history, no nation has ever subjugated its own national interests so as to acquiesce to the perceived interests of another nation in the way the U.S. has with Israel.
Despite this cozy relationship and fawning pro-Israel coverage in the American media, many Americans are waking up to the fact that our one-sided support for Israel is unjust and not in our interests. But American politics is still dominated by special interests, rather than the national interest, and there is no special interest group more powerful than the pro-Israel lobby- even though it only represents the more hawkish segment of America’s Jewish community. Why did the U.S. House of Representatives vote 390-5 “recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza?” Look no further than the power and strength of the Israel lobby.
Get Up, Stand Up
Even as America faces two wars abroad and a catastrophic economic crisis at home, there is no single issue more central to America’s security than to balance America’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the presidential election campaign, one of Barrack Obama’s most frequent talking points was on the need to reduce the influence of special interests in Washington. "The problem we have is that Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die. They go to die because the lobbyists and special interests have a strangle-hold on the agenda in Washington. They go to die in Washington because too many politicians are interested in scoring political points rather than bridging differences in order to get things done. ”
The world is waiting for Mr. Obama to be a man of his word- the future of Israel and Palestine, and the security of the United States lie in the balance.
Murder Incorporated
A comparison of the bloodshed on both sides of the current conflict shows a stunning disparity in the level of casualties and exposes how utterly disproportionate Israel’s response to Hamas’ patchwork rockets has been. Israel has killed nearly twenty times more Palestinians (more than 1,000 and counting with nearly 5,000 injured, including 346 children dead and another 1,709 children wounded according to the United Nations as of January 15, 2009) in just the first fortnight of its assault on the Gaza Strip compared to the last two years worth of Israeli casualties at the hands of Palestinian terror attacks (49 dead in 2007-8 ). Twice as many Palestinians were killed on the very first day of Israel’s rampage (250-300) compared to the number of Israelis killed over the last four years in terror attacks. (116) Thus far, four Israeli civilians have been killed in the conflict, with approximately 78 people wounded . Far more Israelis die each year from traffic accidents than from Hamas rockets. For example, in 2005, the number of Israeli victims of “terror attacks” was less than 10% of the number of traffic fatalities . In 2008 the number of Israeli victims of terror attacks was once again less than 10% of the number killed in traffic accidents, with more than 400 people were killed in road accidents , compared to 36 Israelis killed in terror attacks . Let me be clear- every death is one too many, but it’s important to put the level of violence in context in order to understand how utterly inappropriate Israel’s response is in this situation.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Israel speciously claims that its bloody offensive against the Gaza Strip is a response to rocket fire from Hamas, but even if this were true, which it is not, the response would be wildly disproportionate, as Hamas rocket fire has resulted in less than two dozen Israeli fatalities over the last eight years according to Israeli human rights groups. The truth is that Israel has been planning this attack for more than six months- even as Israel was negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Hamas - and long before the Israelis themselves violated a four month long ceasefire with Hamas on November 4 by assassinating 6 Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip . Note the significance of the date the Israelis chose to break the ceasefire- November 4 was the date of the U.S. Presidential election- certainly the best day of the year to commit acts you don’t want the international community to notice. Just as the timing of the November 4 attack was no accident, the timing of the current offensive- just before the Israeli election and prior to the inauguration of Barrack Obama- is obviously calculated and not a swift reaction to Hamas rocket fire.
Hamas predictably retaliated for the November 4 strike against its members, but its worth noting that Israel assassinated dozens of Palestinians even during the four month period from mid-June to early November when Hamas wasn’t firing any rockets into Israel at all, and it has also assassinated numerous Palestinians on the West Bank- where no rockets have ever been launched from- including, Arafat Al Khawaja, an unarmed 22 year-old that was demonstrating against the assault on Gaza on December 27 . Even the Israeli Foreign Ministry acknowledges that there were virtually no rockets fired into Israel during the ceasefire, prior to their November 4 assault. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+since+2000/Missile+fire+from+Gaza+on+Israeli+civilian+targets+Aug+2007.htm#statistics
The fact that Israel and not the Palestinians violated this most recent ceasefire is part of a pattern of Israel stoking the conflict after periods of dormancy. A study conducted by Tel Aviv University, along with M.I.T. and other academic institutions looked at the last eight years of hostilities and concluded that Israel had unilaterally interrupted 96% of the 25 lulls in violence that lasted a week or more, and 100% of the 14 lulls in violence that lasted for at least 9 days.
What a Fool Believes
Over the last fortnight the Israeli government has served up several dubious claims regarding the background and conduct of the present conflict that need to be dispelled in order to understand the context of what is transpiring in Gaza.
The Song Remains the Same
1) Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip by “disengaging” from the territory three years ago- While it’s true that Israel dismantled its settlements in the Gaza Strip, it routinely enters the territory to conduct assassinations, home demolitions, and other operations. Israel has never truly “disengaged” from the territory or given the Gazans any measure of freedom- it retains control over land and sea borders and airspace, controlling the flow of people and products in and out of the Strip. No one can come or go from the Gaza Strip unless Israel grants them a permit, and Israel often inexplicably denies non-combatants with no criminal history the right to leave Gaza. For example, in July, Israeli officials denied exit permits to three students from Gaza that had won prestigious U.S. government funded Fulbright Scholarships to study in the United States, even after repeated pleas from American diplomats to let them travel to the United States .
This is not an isolated incident, as an article in the International Herald Tribune notes, hundreds of students in Gaza that have won scholarships to study abroad are unable to leave- not because they cannot secure the visas to study in foreign countries- but because Israel prefers to keep them as prisoners in the Gaza Strip. The bottom line is that Gazans have no more control over their lives now than they did prior to Israel’s “disengagement,” and, in fact, Israel has killed more than 1,300 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since disengagement, prior to the current round of fighting which commenced on December 27, including more than 250 children .
The Hustle
2) Instead of turning Gaza into a Dubai on the Mediterranean, Hamas has used the territory to terrorize Israel- The truth is that ever since Hamas won free and fair legislative elections in January 2006, Israel- behind America’s diplomatic bullying- has imposed collective punishment on the Gazans for voting for Hamas by imposing a harsh blockade that has made it impossible for adequate supplies of food, medicine and electricity to reach the Gaza Strip. Long before the present conflict, human rights groups warned that the blockade was having catastrophic effects on the public health and economy of Gaza, and were urging the Israeli government to halt this form of collective punishment. The group Physicians for Human Rights estimates that at least 200 Palestinians have died because Israel refused to allow them out of the Gaza Strip to seek medical care since the imposition of the blockade of Gaza. Halting the flow of food and medicine to civilians as a tool of war is a war crime and a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention. The U.S., for its part, not content to merely play its part in making life miserable in the Gaza Strip, took matters one step further with an Iran-contra-like plan to fund and arm militias to overthrow Hamas .
Aside from the obvious fact that trying to overturn the result of a democratic election undermines the U.S. claim that it’s trying to create a “New Middle East” where democracies replace dictators, the move didn’t work, and the U.S. attempts to topple Hamas only served to strengthen their popularity in the Gaza Strip and around the Arab World. The notion espoused by Thomas Friedman , and other official and un-official Israeli spokespersons that Gaza could “turn into a Dubai” while Israel strangles its economy and the U.S. cows the rest of the world into boycotting it is plainly absurd .
Blame if on the Rain
3) Israel is taking the utmost care in avoiding civilian casualties- Two weeks into the conflict, Israel has already killed at least 79 women, and 346 children, while wounding 1,709 children and 724 women and has killed an untold number of male non-combatants. Israel has also attacked U.N schools serving as safe-havens- in one case killing 3 and in another case killing 42 , a vegetable market ambulances , hospitals , U.N aid convoys, and the U.N. headquarters in Gaza. Israel initially tried to claim that Hamas was using the U.N protected school as a launching pad for mortar attacks, but after strenuous U.N denials, they eventually retracted their claim. Israel’s claims that Hamas is to blame whenever they commit an atrocity against an obviously civilian target remind one of Serbia’s similarly specious claims during the Balkan wars- claims that no one in the international community believed. The U.N. announced on January 8, that they’d have to suspend aid deliveries in the Gaza Strip due to the risk posed by the Israeli army, after a tank shell struck and killed the driver of a U.N aid convoy.
Aside from killing hundreds of civilians in Gaza, Israel is also guilty of deliberately preventing the Red Cross from assisting injured civilians trapped in the ruble of their demolished homes- in one case denying the Red Cross access for four days while soldiers were just meters away from people trying to get out from the wreckage of their homes. Numerous press reports, including a piece in the Washington Post , described a scene of utter carnage. “Emergency workers said they rescued 100 more trapped survivors Thursday and found between 40 and 50 corpses in a devastated residential block south of Gaza City that the Israeli military had kept off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross for four days…rescue workers found 16 bodies Wednesday in a large room of a house in Zaytoun: seven women, six children and three men, all members of the al-Samuni family. Most had sustained trauma injuries from shelling, but many had gunshot wounds as well... Four children, weak but alive, were found lying under blankets, nestled next to their dead mothers, Abuzaid said. Red Cross officials had said earlier that 12 adult bodies had been found in the house.”
Israel also has a history of using weapons banned under international law for use against civilian populations. For example, Human Rights Watch exhaustively documented Israel’s use of cluster bombs in civilian areas in Lebanon in 2006 in a 131 page report entitled, “Flooding South Lebanon: Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006. ” Human Rights watch is now pressing Israel to halt its use of white phosphorus- which can burn down houses and cause horrific burns on human skin. Hamas has, of course, also shown a blatant disregard for Israeli civilians, but fortunately, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal is extremely limited.
Beast of Burden
4) Israel is doing the U.S. a favor by taking on Hamas for us, in another front in the U.S.-led “War on Terror”- this claim has been made by not only the Israeli Foreign Ministry, but also by mainstream U.S. neo-cons like William Kristol in the New York Times- with Kristol going so far as to say that the U.S. should be “thanking Israel” rather than criticizing it. The truth is that Hamas is not part of Al Qaeda’s ideological war against the West-and has not specifically targeted U.S. interests the way Al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups have. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict is, at its heart, a dispute over a piece of land.
The only connection between the Israel- Palestinian conflict and the U.S. led war on terror is that our support for Israel and its violent colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip fuels anti-Americanism in the Arab world, contributes to the deterioration of our already battered image in the Middle East, and serves as a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda and other radical groups. For example, the BBC carried a story on January 12 featuring young Indonesian men that wanted to join the jihad against Israel and the United States in support of Gazans under siege. The story went on to quote an extremist group called the Islamic Defenders Front, which claims to have signed up 5,000 new recruit inspired by the Israeli atrocities in Gaza. In the wake of Barrack Obama’s historic election and the ensuing good feelings toward the United States following this remarkable event, Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip and the complicit U.S. response is a windfall for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. It is, essentially, a reminder to Muslims that while the face of leadership in America may be changing; America’s policies toward the Middle East may not. Rather than thanking Israel for its violent campaigns in the Occupied Territories, we should be condemning it, along with the rest of the world.
It Takes Two
Despite the lopsided disparity in casualty figures and the clear evidence of human rights violations by Israel in the Gaza Strip, most segments of the mainstream U.S. media continue to propagate the myth that both sides are equally to blame while urging a return to a failed peace process- which is really nothing more than a sad farce, whereby Israel goes through the motions while continuing to carve up more and more chunks of the West Bank. These tired pundits that implausibly cling to the two-state solution peace process mirage cannot seem to understand the key reason why Palestinians would support a movement which espouses armed resistance to Israel. Namely the fact that the settler population in the Occupied Territories has more than doubled since the start of the Oslo Peace Process and has continued to grow under successive Israeli governments. If the casualty figures in the present conflict were reversed and Hamas had killed hundreds of Israelis, with the Israelis killing only a handful of Palestinians, no American pundit that hoped to keep his job for long would be claiming that both sides were equally to blame.
Given the mainstream American media’s largely sympathetic pro-Israeli coverage, it’s easy to see how Americans could be confused as to who the victim and who the aggressor is in this conflict. Reports of Palestinian casualties often refer to the victims as “militants” – but its often unclear how the reporter has made this determination- and I suspect that they are often simply parroting whatever the Israeli military has claimed. The New York Times buried coverage of the deadly bombing at the school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for civilians on page 10. Is there any doubt that if a Hamas rocket killed 40 Israelis hiding in a school that the story would have been on the front page? For that matter, can anyone imagine the reaction of U.S. officials and the media if 1,000 Israelis had been killed thus far in this conflict and just a handful of Palestinians? Can anyone doubt that we’d be hearing calls for a U.S. military intervention to stop Hamas? Somehow we are a lot less concerned about 1,000 dead Palestinians whose lives aren’t worth as much as Israelis.
Sympathy for the Devil?
Yesterday I rode home from work on Chicago’s Metra commuter line and sat next to a middle aged woman that seemed visibly distraught by the stories she was reading on her laptop. After several loud, audible sighs, and one episode where she ostentatiously covered her eyes with her hands while tilting her head back to face the heavens, I looked down to see what website she was looking at. It was something called The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) website. My seat- mate was watching a video account of a rabbi’s report from what was billed as “War-Torn Israel.” I couldn’t hear the narrative because she had headphones on, but the images were not of the shattered homes, bodies in the streets and omnipresent rubble of Gaza, but instead scenes of rolling, verdant, bucolic hills in Israel. It looked more like the Sound of Music to me than a war zone. I then watched as she clicked into another page whose headline read, “I Survived a Hamas Rocket Attack!” After more audible sighs, I watched her click into a “Donate Now” page, which asks Americans to donate money- not to the tens of thousands of Gazans that are now homeless and in dire need of food and medicine, not to the Red Cross which is working around the clock to treat the thousands of seriously wounded Palestinians in the most primitively under funded hospitals and medical clinics imaginable, but to the Israeli victims of “Hamas terrorism.” While the IFCJ highlights its support to “victims of Hamas terrorism” it also, by its own admission, provides support to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which is perpetrating atrocities in Gaza, in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
Even though media reports have indicated that only four Israeli civilians have been killed in this conflict thus far, the IFCJ website reports that “thousands of Israelis have been injured and traumatized.” The United Nations has estimated that some 220 Israeli civilians have been injured, so one can only guess that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has thrown the word “traumatized” in there to cover what is an obviously misleading appeal. I’ve combed through this website and there is not a word of grief or regret or even a nugget of humanity expressed for the huge numbers of Palestinian dead and injured- and there are absolutely no appeals to help with the dire humanitarian crisis going on in the Gaza Strip.
More than a decade ago, during the devastating siege of Sarajevo, a Jewish friend and colleague of mine at the Chicago Tribune invited me to attend a United Jewish Appeal (UJA) event on the “humanitarian crisis in Bosnia.” My friend knew that I was interested in the situation in the Balkans, and the promotional flyer she forwarded me regarding the event looked interesting. The event turned out to be a 90 minute slideshow and presentation of how the UJA, along with other Jewish charities had helped members of Sarajevo’s tiny Jewish community move to Israel. At the end of the presentation, there was a pitch to donate money to help the remaining Jews in Bosnia. There was absolutely no mention of the genocidal campaign against Bosnian Muslims, or the plight of any other groups in Bosnia other than the Jews there. At the conclusion of the pitch, there was a lengthy question and answer session- and, given the fact that the promotional flyer had not mentioned that the presentation would be focused solely on Bosnia’s small Jewish community, I expected there to be some questions on the big picture situation in Bosnia. Yet, once again, all of the questions and discussion centered on the plight of Bosnia’s Jews.
I retell these stories to demonstrate the kind of dangerous, bunker mentality that can take hold amongst groups of embattled people that become capable of only seeing the suffering of their own kind. Those that focus solely on the suffering of people from their own race, religion or ethnic group aren’t bad people, and many groups are certainly guilty of this, but you have to feel depressed about the prospects for peace in the Holy Land when supporters of Israel can look at this conflict in Gaza and feel motivated to provide material support solely to the war machine that is responsible for committing more than 98% of the casualties. My point is not that fervent supporters of Israel are demonic, or even more hard-hearted than others, or that there are no Israeli victims of Hamas deserve sympathy or support. But when you look at the scale of the killing and the devastation in the already desperately poor Gaza Strip, and compare it with the minimal damage that Israel- a wealthy and advanced country- has suffered, and then conclude that it’s the Israelis who need your help, you are obviously completely immune to the suffering of the Palestinians.
There is no question that the legacy of the Holocaust looms large on the psyche of Israelis and their ardent supporters around the world. In their minds, Israel is the perennial victim no matter the facts of the situation. But at what point will the rest of the world, particularly the United States stop excusing Israel’s conduct and begin to treat it like any other nation that needs to abide by international law? Millions around the world are hoping that Barrack Obama will give Israel the tough love it desperately needs, but his campaign rhetoric is not encouraging on this score.
During a visit to Israel during the campaign, Obama was quoted as saying, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that… And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing,” Mr. Obama did not address how he or his daughters might feel about having their homes attacked by F-16’s, Apache helicopters and tanks. Also no mention of the fact that Israelis that are living in the towns being subjected to Hamas rockets have the freedom to travel to safe locations, whereas Gazans are trapped like prisoners in the Gaza Strip. The implication that somehow that the children of Israel are in more danger from Hamas rockets than the children of Gaza from the Israeli military- this despite the fact that more than 200 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military between 2006 and October 2008, while, during the same time frame, only five Israel children (still obviously 5 too many) were killed in Israel. Of course, if Mr. Obama had to move his family to either Israel or the Gaza Strip, one has to believe he’d take his chances against the Hamas rockets and move them to Israel. I certainly would.
Rocket Men
This conflict is not about Hamas rockets. Hamas has transformed itself from a mere armed resistance group into a political movement, though it still foolishly refuses to recognize Israel and continues to offer Israel the pretext for war it craves by firing its ineffectual homemade rockets into Israel. Israel does not want peace with Hamas no matter what the terms are- it wants to destroy Hamas, not make peace with it. The Israeli leadership believes that by hammering the Gazans they’ll succeed in cowing them into submission and turning them against Hamas. With an election looming on the horizon, Israeli leaders are all trying to slake the electorate’s thirst for vengeance.
But no matter how much force Israel uses in Gaza, they will not succeed in weakening Hamas, and, in fact, the harsher their response, the more likely Hamas will be strengthened. Most Gazans are part of very large, close- knit extended families with very extensive social circles, and nearly every man, woman and child that has been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces has brothers, parents, cousins, uncles and friends whose attitudes towards Israel will harden. The Palestinians are a resilient people, who are capable of enduring grave suffering and injustice. To think that they can be smashed into submission is foolhardy.
When Doves Cry
Two weeks prior to launching the present offensive in Gaza, Israel’s Foreign Minister was quoted as saying, “I will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Israeli Arabs, and tell them, 'your national solution lies elsewhere. '"
This is an astonishing, yet very calculated statement, in that, no candidate for high office with her level of political experience would make it unless they believed that the sentiment would appeal to a broad spectrum of the electorate. Livni is essentially saying that if the Palestinians get a state on the West Bank, then the Arab citizens of Israel- who make up 20% of the country- should be deported, or ethnically cleansed from the territory. This notion that non-Jewish Arab citizens should be driven out exposes the kind of deeply ingrained racism which allows the Israeli leadership to act as it is in the Gaza Strip at this moment.
Its important to remember that Livni is Israel’s top diplomat- its acting Foreign Minister- and, a leading presidential candidate, whom the international media has called the “dovish” candidate. This is not a far-right, fringe candidate- but rather someone firmly in the center-left spectrum of Israeli politics. Can one imagine the reaction if Condoleeza Rice had opined that American citizens of Hispanic descent (not illegal immigrants, but actual U.S. citizens) should plan their future in Mexico?
Gimme Shelter
As the United States stands by and applauds while Israel stubbornly presses on with its lethal assault in Gaza, in the teeth of a nearly unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire (the U.S. voted “present” after squelching earlier, stronger statements against Israeli aggression), it is difficult to imagine what Israel would have to do in order to draw U.S. condemnation. Perhaps Israel would need to commit a thoroughly comprehensive genocide, effectively “cleansing” the entire Occupied Territories of Palestinians once and for all, in order to rupture the U.S.- Israel alliance. In human history, no nation has ever subjugated its own national interests so as to acquiesce to the perceived interests of another nation in the way the U.S. has with Israel.
Despite this cozy relationship and fawning pro-Israel coverage in the American media, many Americans are waking up to the fact that our one-sided support for Israel is unjust and not in our interests. But American politics is still dominated by special interests, rather than the national interest, and there is no special interest group more powerful than the pro-Israel lobby- even though it only represents the more hawkish segment of America’s Jewish community. Why did the U.S. House of Representatives vote 390-5 “recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza?” Look no further than the power and strength of the Israel lobby.
Get Up, Stand Up
Even as America faces two wars abroad and a catastrophic economic crisis at home, there is no single issue more central to America’s security than to balance America’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the presidential election campaign, one of Barrack Obama’s most frequent talking points was on the need to reduce the influence of special interests in Washington. "The problem we have is that Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die. They go to die because the lobbyists and special interests have a strangle-hold on the agenda in Washington. They go to die in Washington because too many politicians are interested in scoring political points rather than bridging differences in order to get things done. ”
The world is waiting for Mr. Obama to be a man of his word- the future of Israel and Palestine, and the security of the United States lie in the balance.
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