sabotabby did it and that's where I saw it and gakked it:

First thing's first: it is based on this little "master piece"*.

Second, here's what you do:
Bold means I agree
Struck Out means I don't agree.
Italics means I don't know
(I added personal commentary where I saw fit)

( A Bad American? Moi? )

*Or Master Piss as I like to say at times.

I've been a busy bee these past few days.
I had a fairly large exam today and handed in the paper I stayed up all night doing (same course, BTW). If I never touch this material again it will be too soon.

In two weeks the second semester exam season is to commence.
*glomps*

Monday and Tuesday there was a bunch of activity on campus planned and arranged by the Student Coalition (with your truly being one part of the planning and arranging team. Yes, I'm touting my own horn) regarding the Occupation, as June marked 41 years of the Occupation in Gaza and the West Bank).

On Monday we arranged an open discussion regarding the One State Solution and the Two State solution. It was great, as a whole bunch of opinions were heard and discussed.
The majority were Leftists, obviously - though the posters and fliers were worded to not be too demagogic or partial, we wanted the Mainstream student body to come a listen - of which there a few but out of thirty or so people that quickly dwindled to twenty to fifteen there weren't a whole lot of Liberals, though those that were there spiced things us a bit.There were no outright Rightists, as they know us and hate us... that's okay, we don't like them much either.

On Tuesday we had a myth busting session; an ICAHD activist gave a hugely informative lecture about the population control that goes on in the West Bank (specifically East Jerusalem, which is a world in and of itself within the Occupation discourse) under the guise of Security and how that word is used as a motivation for a whole slew of attacks against civilians in the West Bank (these attacks include House Demolitions, "Check Points", the Separation Wall etc. etc.).
After the ensuing discussion and break we had MBC reporter Qasem Hatib who came to talk to us about the "No Palestinian Partner" myth and discourse. We discussed how that particular discourse became prevalent in the Barak and Camp David years (and following) and how it has been used since then as a political tool by Israel to keep the status quo (not what he said, but what I gleaned from his very cynical journalistic words - such a pessimist, made us idealists all sad... kidding, I don't think I've ever met a bigger bunch of cynics than those in the Coalition).

Very successful half week so far, I'd say.

So it was a good, if stressful week on campus.
Wednesday was a bad day for Jerusalem.
A man went on a killing spree on a tractor. ( Read more about it, there is a plethora of links to be found behind )

Settlers are held accountable for their illegal actions.

Remember last week, I mentioned the lynch just outside Susya - you can read about and the links that go with the incident here.

Well, two of those (and I loathe to call them that) people were arrested today.

Imagine that.
I guess when there's actual video footage of a lynch being committed, as much as they'd like to, I don't think the police can actually deny that there is actual, ya know, fucking violence committed against old ladies who just happened to be there.

And they do it for the hell of it.

It doesn't matter that these (and again, I hate using this word to describe them) people believe that what they do is right.

Objectively... these particular Settlers are pieces of shit.

To this kind of News I can only go *snort*.
No, seriously.
I snorted so hard when I read this that I scared my cat.

This gem from Madam Secretary Rice:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Jewish settlement building "a problem" on Saturday and said Israel had not done enough to ease restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

"Look, it's a problem and I think it's a problem that we're going to address with the Israelis," Rice said of recent Israeli settlement construction announcements as she flew to Tel Aviv on her sixth trip this year to try to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Annapolis was less than six months ago and the Settlement growth, which was supposed to cease and desist just continued. With an explicit governmental Carte Blanche I might add.

Eight years in which the only interest Uncle Sam had of this little Hell Hole was that of Israeli weapons capabilities (kudos to us in that regard) and deterrence capabilities with said weapons (we fucked that one up).
So while the Bush is limping around Europe like the lame duck that he is and sending Ms. Rice to run his dirty errands... which here are many and have been neglected.

I'm cynical.
I want this to work out.
I really, really do.
But when only now Hamas and Fatah are talking to each other.
When Hamas fires over fifty rockets into Israel and Israel is constantly retaliating which causes retaliation from Hamas.
There are so many other factors which are just too long to go into, because it's late in the day and I just get depressed when I think about it in a way that isn't in the back of my mind.

Fuck it.

No superheros here.
No background music.
And certainly no happy endings in which said superhero lives to save another day.

Hey you guys, remember that lynching I mentioned last week?

Surptise, surprise... earlier this week there was another one - Ynet article.
And this time you can watch a video via the BBC article of it actually taking place, because the clever people at B'Tselem have been giving out video cameras to the people in villages to shoot the violence committed against them by the Settlers.

Those young men in the video that are wielding those baseball bats are probably in their late teens or early twenties.

No arrests have been made.
Yes, really.
A week have gone by and nothing, nada, ziltch, gurnisht and אפס מאופס.

And you know what really grinds my axe? The fact that, once again, the authorities, the media, the lawyers (should they come to be... though whenever there's trouble you can always rely on "Lawyers, Guns and Money") will say, what they said about the Jewish boys who lynched the Arab boys in Pisgat Ze'ev: This was a one time incident, they're wild weeds in the garden of Jewish goodness, these are normative youths who are misguided, etc, etc, etc.

And you know something, I keep seeing the word "Normative" thrown around when I read or come across incidents like this and to that I can only quote:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya (The Princess Bride, 1987)

In October 2000 there was a lynch. It was all over the News. It isn't easily forgotten, especially not with images as iconic as this.

It took me no time to find these links.
The only link I could find of this disgusting story, beyond the blogosphere, was in Ha'aretz weekend supplement (printed edition) in Hebrew. Today I got an RSS feed of the story translated into English. Unlike the Hebrew article, which has markup errors and is thus basically unreadable on-line, the English edition doesn't have pictures and I have not been able to find any other photos of the lynching. A group of dozens Jewish boys between the ages of 15-18 from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev assaulted and almost murdered two Palestinian teens from Shu'fat, which is just a stone throw away form that Jewish neighborhood.

The lynching took place on the 30th of April (yes, a month ago) and it was only brought to the media this past week.
What is even more disgusting is that the 30th of April this year was National Holocaust Memorial Day, obviously the date was not chosen for the hell of it, especially because Palestinians come to Pisgat Ze'ev Mall often enough for them to be familiar to Jewish population.

The article is a horrifying and illuminating read. I must be growing cynical in my old age as I was not surprised at all that something like this happened. The fact that I share with those "good Jewish boys" an iota of commonality is sickening.

Did I mention there was a book burning as well? Oh, and that Israel is the 4th largest arms dealer in the world.

I end this extremely depressing entry with the hope that someday lynches, burnings and profiteering through the suffering of others will be shocking and nauseating.

I am not shocked and nauseated that these things happen in the country in which I live.
That is the saddest thing of all.

I'm tired.
I'm never taking a course that requires me to wake up at six AM.
Or alternately I could start going to sleep at reasonable hours...
But fuck that right?

But the fact that I'm tired won't stop me from reporting this shit, that went down in the beginning of last weekend and which may or may not be resolved.
It pissed me off royally.
Beyond the tragic and cruel nature of these invalidated conversions, it spotlights a grave and important matter about the relationship of religion and state in Israel.
That it is rotten.

I got into an argument about what is acceptable involvement of religious establishment in the state.
Personally, I think they can fuck off, since these establishments are chauvinistic, sexist and racist.

There is no civil marriage in Israel, the closest we have is common-law unions which were established so that "un-marriageable" couples could have legal standing.
Who are the "un-marriageable" you ask - they are members of the population that cannot get married through the Rabbanut. The system was initially built for couples who according to Halakha couldn't marry each other: Cohens and divorces mainly. But this also includes Mamzerim (bastards) who cannot marry through the Rabbanut, Jews cannot marry Muslims or Christians, nor can Muslims and Christians marry each other, there is no same-sex marriage either.
This, is of course easily solved by marrying elsewhere; Cyprus, Canada, the USA, Anywhere that allows foreign nationals to marry.

And after marriage (which brings great civil benefits) comes divorce (more and more these days and don't let anyone tell you otherwise).
It's a great invention, Jews are practical that way.
Of course it is the Husband that must grant the Wife the Get (divorce), she can "choose" whether to accept it or not. Not that the man would give a shit, all he needs in order to have a Halachikly legal family (while not divorced to his first wife) is something like a 100 signatures from 100 Rabbis and he can marry and have (halachicly)legal children - bigamy and polygamy are illegal in Israel - so he can ignore with impunity the pleas his Wife makes so that they can be rid of each other. There are sanctions, monetary usually, but go beg a Yeshivah Bochur to pay alimony when he can't sustain himself without a wife, or just a run of the mill asshole who doesn't want to pay alimony and that putting him in jail only postpones the writ of execution of whatever he owes his wife, his lawer and his children should he have any. The wife, due to all this, is now an Aguna - another side effect of the Rabbis revocation of the conversions - there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Agunot women in Israel.

My side of the argument was that we either take the anti-patriarchy hammer and bash the Rabbanut until nothing is left of that racist, sexist establishment, or have the state acknowledge the fact that there is more to Judaism than Orthodoxy so that that the pluralism we pretend to have in Israel have some basis in reality.

A mixture of reform and revolution - I'm more keen on rebuilding from the grassroots, but others kind of like the way things are... or at the very least don't mind the way things are; seeing as the privilege of being born Jewish has the added bonus that no one will be nosing around our private life and checking to see if we're actually being Jewish.

It makes me sick.

I've heard people say it takes time for these things to change, after all blacks in the USA only got civil rights in the 60's of the 20th century and the women only got the vote less than a hundred years ago.
Change is slow but it happens.

Yes, change is slow... when those in power have no incentive to change, when the atrocities that these establishments perpetrate don't touch their lives, then change can be slow.
When the status quo is just fine and dandy to The Man, then change can be slow.

Classical liberal* bullshit.

*No offense to any liberals who may be reading this.