Winners and Losers

So, over one- hundred people killed, millions of dollars in property damages on both sides, entire populations under siege, and two weeks later we really must ask ourselves, who the fuck won?

Sorry, did the adult language above offend you? I don't often write using expletives but sometimes they are completely necessary. I am angry and frustrated by the results of operation ""Pillar of Defense." If for no other reason that neither I nor most of the civilian population in Israel have the least idea what it is that we were trying to accomplish. I assume that it had something to do with stopping rockets, mortars, and other assorted instruments of death from raining down on us. OK, that's a good objective in that it is measurable at least. Of course we must ask ourselves why now, why not six months ago, why not a month from now. It's not like the rockets are a new thing, they've been doing that for a while, and I would hazard a guess that, left to their own devices they'll probably keep doing it.

Here the cynic will say: "it happened just now because it couldn't happen before during the U.S. elections."
Me: "I guess I can see that. Maybe. But what woul have been so wrong about next week, or next month for that matter?"
Cynic: "Next month are the Israeli elections. The whole circuswas designed to portray Bibi as strong, enhance his credentials as leader of the nation in her time of dire need. You do that before the election, dufus, not afterwards. Duh."

Maybe. Maybe the guys in the tinfoil hats are right, but I don't buy it. It's not that I don't feel that the current leadership isn't venal enough to do such a thing. I do think that, and of course they are. Venal? They'd throw grandma under the bus and hold her down while she's run over if they thought it'd help them any. But as much as this hurts me to say, this not venality, it's posturing. It's macho bravado gone terribly, terribly wrong. From where I stand this looked nothing so much as two assholes bragging about whose car has got the bigger engine and then, bizarrely, deciding that the best way to settle the argument would be not with a drag race, but with a friendly game of chicken. And just to make it interesting, why don't we put the whole of the civilian population in the backseat. What could possibly go wrong?

So? Who won? Well, it sure as shit wasn't us. I don't think that there is anyone that thinks that the Hamas guns have gone silent for good. "Pillar of Defense"? Don't crack me up, big stinking pile of... well, you get the idea. So, if we didn't win, was it the psychopaths that won? No, not them either. If you don't believe me go ask el-Jabri, now rotting in the ground.

So who won? No one.

Beer

Last week I had the opportunity to taste for the first time two beers produced in the area. On Wednesday I went out with some friends to a micro-brewery that's been operating for a couple of years now and tried their wheat beer. On Saturday, we were invited to a very interesting tour of Nazareth; when that was done we found ourselves with some friends at a wonderful restaurant that served, among many others, Taybeh beer.

One of these two beers was atrocious and the other one was really good, which led me to think that I really should blog about the experience. I kept thinking about it as the "Zionist" beer vs. the "Palestinian" beer. I was already to make all sorts of analogies between the two beers and their methods of production, maybe trying to stretch the analogy to encompass a larger statement about the entrepreneurial culture in each of the peoples, natch, the very culture of the two peoples.

Sometimes, I'm just full of crap.

I got pulled into the trap of seeing everything around here, including food and drink, through the lens of national conflict. Beer wouldn't be the first victim of this distortion. Some idiots on both sides have been waging an ongoing battle of falafel. Yes, falafel. Little balls made out of garbanzo beans, deep-fried in oil and served in a pita. A battle of that. Who can make the bigger falafel portion and so get into Guiness's Book of World Records.

I understand about national pride and looking for ways to bring honor to your nation, but falafel? Really? What's next, changing the words of the American anthem? And the burners red glare, the chickpea balls bursting in air. Not only does it kill the metric, it really doesn't have that ring of authenticity, does it?

Silly, I know. So why is the drive of nationalistic politics so seductive? No, not seductive, that implies that there was some persuasion involved. So ingrained. I didn't see it coming and it got me good. It might have been Albert Einstein that said, "I don't know what fish talk about, but it isn't water," and that is the best explanation I can give. This nationalistic mumbo-jumbo works on all of us because it is so pervasive. It just permeates every aspect of our living to where we don't even notice it. Like fish and water, it has become part of the context in which we live, defining so many of our choices without us even being aware of it.

So last week I went out twice with friends and had two different beers. From one of those beers I'll happily have a second and a third glass. From the other, let's just say that the glass I already had was worth three: first, last, and one too many. And no, I'm not going to tell you which was which.

Just to close the subject, some more words of wisdom from W.C. Fields:

I never drink water. Fish f*** in it.

And here's something that you don't see everyday: Nuance

So Mahmmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority goes to the UN to ask them for a state and even before a vote is taken the question on everyone's lips around here is: Is it good for us?

One might have thought (ok, I thought) that opinions would be neatly segmented along political lines.  Left-wing doves would think it's a good thing and right-wing hawks would think it's a bad idea and that would be it.  Onto the next discussion.

Boy did I get that one wrong.

As it turns out there's a range of nuanced opinions around here and they don't segment along any traditional lines.  They don't segment along any lines as far as I can tell.  I've had left wingers explaining patiently why going to the UN is just a stunt that ultimately hurts the Palestinians chances for a state.  On the other hand I've heard right wingers explain that Abbas' little stunt would work out in our favor, giving Israelis a focus around which to rally and to show unity in the face of adversity and so on.

Nuance in political analysis in not something we encounter readily over here.  Not only that, the punditocracy in the papers and on TV were quick to give grades to Abbas, Bibi, and Obama (like any of them would care).  They (the pundits) were the ones with the clear-cut pronouncements, the ones with the unsubtle analysis.  By comparison with the pundits, the cabbie that drove me home from the airport a few days ago was subtlety itself, all nuance and shades of gray, looking at the situation from twelve different angles and reserving judgement until more information came in.

Really.

Someone said once (it might have been Bibi) that the root problem of Americans on the world stage is that they have no sense of history, that for them anything that happened more than ten years in the past happened "a long time ago" whether it'd be the Inquisition or the Battle of the Bulge.  By the same token, the problem of Jews and Arabs is that they have no distance from history.  Everything that ever happened is kept painfully close as though it just occurred, whether it is the Hebron riots eighty years ago or the burning of a synagogue in York (and I'll let you guess when that one took place).

Both of these images are crude stereotypes of course, but they are instructive in a way.  Having no sense of history and having no distance from historical events both lend themselves to having absolutist, naive views of policy and how to react to unfolding events.  And the best antidote to such views is nuance.

Food for thought.