Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Preoccupied

Showing posts with label Preoccupied. Show all posts

Thursday, February 10, 2022

BDS Preparing To Continue Ignoring Russian Seizure Of Ukrainian Territory (PreOccupied Territory)

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Russian launcher London, February 10 - Leaders of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement targeting Israel over what they consider the Jewish State's occupation of Palestinian land announced today that as Moscow prepares to increase its hold on areas that belong to Kiev under international law, the movement will maintain its exclusive focus on Israel, and not acknowledge the greater loss of life, suffering, human rights violations, and other monumental injustices elsewhere in the world that dwarf those against which they claim to fight.

Prominent advocates of BDS stressed Thursday the importance of riveting their attention to what they allege Israel does, and not to let the atrocities and egregious policies of some of the most murderous regimes in history distract them from the singular goal of righting a supposed wrong that barely registers in the annals of human suffering, in the process of which they foment and encourage further suffering, much of it self-inflicted by Palestinians.

"We have never let other crises divert us from the central issue, which is Palestine," affirmed Omar Barghouti, who holds a Master's degree from Tel Aviv University. "China's occupation and cultural genocide in Tibet; its extermination of Uighurs in Xinjiang; its suppression of dissent in Hong Kong; Russian occupation of South Ossetia and large chunks of Ukraine; Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus - all of these and other large-scale crimes lie outside of our moral purview. Despite their accounting for tens of millions of casualties, and hundreds of millions of devastated lives over vast swaths of land, not to mention the erasure of indigenous identity and culture in those lands, whereas the Palestine conflict accounts for perhaps fifty thousand lives and territory the size of New Jersey, we maintain that righting the injustices facing Palestine demands more urgency. Some of us, in fact, dismiss that any of those other conflicts involve injustices at all. But don't you dare try to question the Nakba!"

"I've always said our movement, which is all about universal justice, always focuses only on Jewish occupation because you have to start somewhere," explained Ariel Gold, of Code Pink. "If anyone wants to start a BDS targeting Ethiopia over Tigray, or Myanmar over the Rohingya, or Morocco over Western Sahara, or... you get the idea, I'd be hear all day if I had to go through all the ones affecting more people than Israel-Palestine does - if anyone wants to do the same thing in other places, they can. No one's stopping them. I mean, good luck generating interest when Jews aren't involved, but they're welcome to it."

Without Antisemitism, Presbyterian Church Unsure How To Attract Members (PreOccupied Territory)

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Louisville, February 3 - An American Christian movement constituting part of the mainline Protestant demographic in the United States would not have the first clue how to go about filling its pews if it did not wallow in Judaeophobia thinly-veiled as support for Palestinian rights, leaders of the movement acknowledged today.

Senior figures in the Presbyterian Church (USA) voiced their anxiety at having to pull back from a staunch anti-Israel ideological and political line in the face of economic and social pressures, a line to which the affiliation has hewed in explicit terms for more than fifteen years, but stemming from decades of progressive activism with is ranks that often placed the church at odds with mainstream, pro-Israel Americans. Specifically, they fear the lack of a compelling message that will attract worshipers and adherents if they cannot channel venomous Jew-hate into anti-Israel policy and rhetoric. The membership crisis has seen membership tumble from over 3 million in 1984 to just over 1.2 million in 2020.

"I'm flummoxed as to how other churches do it," confessed Juan Tricponi, an Elder of the Synod of Boriquen, Puerto Rico. "I'm not just talking about other Presbyterians, most of whom are neutral or even pro-Israel. I mean American Protestants in general, and not only evangelicals. Without harnessing the grievance culture and the powerlessness that feeds the conspiratorial mindset behind antisemitism, what's a church supposed to do to appeal to the populace? Tout faith in God and His salvation? Please. This isn't the fourth century anymore."

"OK, that's not a fair comparison," he reconsidered. "Plenty of antisemitism in fourth-century theology and rhetoric, as well. Whatever, the point is I'd be hard-pressed to find a Christian vision and platform that will appeal to enough people unless we also incorporate the deicide charge against the Jews but dressed up as ani-Zionism. Who can even do that?"

"It might pay to have a look at non-Presbyterian churches to see what they do, since I understand they seldom have to face this dilemma," acknowledged Rev. Gregory J. Bentley, a moderator at the 224th General Assembly of the church in Baltimore. "It must be fascinating to have a theology and praxis that doesn't revolve around demonizing Jewish sovereignty and treating it with all the vehemence once reserved for Satan himself. Speaking for myself, I'm not sure I could stomach an approach to Godliness that doesn't incorporate a visceral intolerance for the Jew, or the Jewish State. I do hope it never comes to that."

Arrow Missile Successfully Intercepts Proposal To Cut Exorbitant IDF Pensions (PreOccupied Territory)

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missile launch Tel Aviv, January 27 - Senior military officials and officers congratulated one another today on a successful demonstration of an innovative, airborne threat-neutralization system that today downed an incoming law aimed at curtailing the cushy retirement packages that those senior officers enjoy for life at taxpayer expense.

An Arrow Interceptor hit the target before it could reenter the atmosphere, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense told reporters today at a press conference.

"We are pleased to announce that the Arrow-3 has progressed more quickly, and more efficiently, than even our ambitious timeline," stated ministry representative Pensia Taktzivit. "This contribution to Israel's emerging 'layered defense' umbrella will both protect our interests and deter those who might otherwise attempt to harm those interests."

According to Taktzivit's description, the Arrow interceptor used both ground-based and its own internal guidance system to locate, track, and intercept the threat to generals' and colonels' pensions, which, unlike most retirement programs, allocate a guaranteed amount of taxpayer-provided government funds to those retired senior officers, instead of the investment-based programs on which the bulk of Israel's population must rely to support them during their golden years. The military pensions constitute a significant budget drain for a defense establishment that seeks to extract itself from dependence on American largesse, largesse that requires the IDF to spend the billions provided only on American products and services and renders any military systems purchased through the program dependent in turn on American technology, legacy systems, and terms of use.

Defense analysts cautioned that the interception of the threat today does not guarantee other threats will not emerge, and that the IDF, Ministry of Defense, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and other bodies, must maintain vigilance in the face of forces that would deprive retired staff officers of the pampered lifestyle of the one percent, even as the military wastes untold amounts on "employing" many of its soldiers in useless roles that exist only because of a universal draft law that, even with exemptions for entire classes of population such as Arabs and Haredim, foists upon the IDF thousands of teenagers and young adults unable or unwilling to dedicate three precious years in the prime of their lives to superfluous "support" of the actually-essential combat, combat-support, and logistics personnel.

"The biggest emergent threat might not even come from the air," acknowledged commentator Hugh Scratchmibach. "Israel's political leadership no longer relies as heavily as it once did on former generals to join its ranks, a fact that may continue to erode the solidarity necessary among that leadership for preservation of the privileged status retired senior officers have hitherto enjoyed."

I Forgot You Were Jewish When I Said I Support Your Self-Determination (PreOccupied Territory)

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I Forgot You Were Jewish When I Said I Support Your Self-Determination

by Entirée Szyst, progressive activist

man with shades London, January 20 - Oh, goodness, I'm so sorry. Your ancestry and heritage had totally slipped my mind a few minutes ago, and had I remembered, I'd not have mindlessly agreed that you and your people deserve to govern yourselves in your own land and not remain at the mercy of host cultures. I hope you didn't misunderstand.

As a progressive, I live by a certain set of principles, high among them that every identity group deserves respect and may define itself and its needs without seeking approval from others or the dominant group. My political path, decisions, and rhetoric all draw heavy influence from that principle, and if I neglect to take it into account in my choices and my speech, I risk compromising the very values I claim to hold dear. But I also forgot for a moment that your specific identity group is Jewish. My colleagues and I in the progressive movement carve out an exception to that principle when it involves Jews. I'm sorry I gave the wrong impression earlier when I expressed support for your people's self-determination, let alone in their ancestral homeland. The opposite, I assure you!

In fact I oppose the very notion of Jewish peoplehood, simply because the implications of that phenomenon undermine so many of the causes I espouse.

Jewish faith, or membership in a Jewish faith community, poses no problem. As long as you restrict your Jewishness to matters of ritual, doctrine, or even morality, I'm with you! Just don't claim that Jews are a distinct people, because if I acknowledge Jewish peoplehood, I must perforce concede that Jews have a collective right to manifest that peoplehood in political terms, and that the most appropriate - indeed, the only historically viable - venue for such an endeavor is the very place where Jewish peoplehood came to be. That conflicts with the Palestinian cause, the crown jewel of all progressive causes. I apologize for, however briefly, implying that the two are not mutually exclusive, or worse, that even for an instant I might neglect the primacy of Palestinian claims and narrative.

Now you must apologize to me for causing me to violate one of the cardinal values of progressivism. That is correct: progressives, as ontologically your moral superiors, cannot fail; we can only be failed. Therefore, culpability for my erstwhile neglect of Palestinian supremacy lies with you, my Jewish-and-possibly-Zionist interlocutor, and not with me. Axioms, dear fellow; axioms.

Human Rights Group Insists Drone Infiltrating From Lebanon Just Looking For Work (PreOccupied Territory)

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drone Kiryat Sh'monah, January 13 - NGOs decried Israel's downing of an unmanned aircraft today that penetrated the country's northern border, claiming that the IDF should have ascertained the device's intentions before opening fire, and not assume malice amid some likelihood that the quadcopter fled its economically-beleaguered homeland in search of employment and a brighter future.

A surface-to-air missile downed a drone this morning that had crossed from Lebanon near Israel's northernmost city, the latest in a string of such infiltrations by Hezbollah-operated craft - the Iran-backed Shiite militia that exerts de facto control over Lebanon and an existential foe of the Jewish State. Activists from Btselem, Human Rights Watch, and other groups demanded an investigation into the incident, charging that the military personnel responsible for the order to fire failed to ascertain that the drone in fact aimed to accomplish anything beyond finding a stable source of income, given the collapse of Lebanon's economy, currency, public services, and supply situation.

"We have come to expect this kind of prejudgment and prejudice from Israel's security forces," lamented Btselem's Anna Thropomorova. "Shoot first, ask questions later, if at all. In fact I believe they only ask questions later when we and our colleagues in the human rights community give the matter attention, because Israel sees no interest in questioning its assumption that a remotely-piloted device with the potential to conduct espionage, sabotage, bombing, or other malicious purposes, and known to form part of the arsenal of the world's richest and best-equipped terrorist organization, must be intercepted immediately. It's an extension of their brutal attitude toward Palestinians, whom the IDF see as a threat by default just because of a few thousand Israelis killed in Palestinian violence. How many Palestinians did IDF troops kill for throwing firebombs when maybe those Palestinians were just trying to initiate a friendly game of catch?"

Dan LeKhafshtus of Human Right Watch concurred. "The prejudice is deadly," he decried. "A humane response would involve gentler treatment and perhaps eventual repatriation, but Israel has seldom shown willingness to change its behavior in that direction."

A statement by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called on the High Court to restrain the IDF from intercepting any future cross-border drones not just from Lebanon, but from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip, as well. "No device must suffer because it seeks a better existence for itself and its children," the statement read. "We fear that failure to act on this phenomenon will explode in our faces."

Woman Who 'Follows The Science!' Dismisses Genetics, Archaeology Tying Jews To Levant (PreOccupied Territory)

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woman in mask Tel Aviv, January 6 - A resident of the affluent northern section of Israel's commercial and financial center expresses disgust and animosity toward those who disregard what she touts as the objective, clinical, and therefore unimpeachable approach to policy questions such as COVID mitigation, while she ignores more robust evidence undermining her political assumptions regarding her people's origins.

Adi Bar-Lev, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Tel Aviv University, rails at colleagues, students, and fellow Israeli citizens who fail to maintain adherence to government and institutional distancing, masking, isolation, and vaccination guidelines, even as a consistent stream of studies has demonstrated the questionable benefit of such guidelines, which were based on flawed modeling and framing. At the same time, Professor Bar-Lev insists Jews have no historical, legal, moral, or other claim to the land on which they have established a state of their own, a position that flies in the face of mountainous genetic, archaeological, documentary, and cultural evidence that Jews emerged as a people in what is now Israel several thousand years ago and have maintained their distinct character despite centuries of exile and dispersion.

"Those who refuse to follow the science, and thus endanger us all, must be shunned, perhaps punished," the academic declared at a faculty meeting this morning. She proceeded to delineate various violations of COVID protocols she had witnessed among university staff, including minimum-wage custodial workers whose lax attitude toward keeping a cloth or disposable mask properly in position over the nose prompted the professor to suggest dismissal. Initial, but soon reversed, and more recently reversed again, input from scientists downplayed the utility of cloth or standard masks. Shifting scientific consensus on masks and other elements of public health policy in the shadow of COVID has not seen Professor Bar-Lev waver from her commitment to a late-2020 moment in that consensus.

By contrast, Bar-Lev waves away firmly-established factors disproving her contention that Jews represent a foreign element in the Arab Middle East, such as haplotypes that Jews whose ancestors spent centuries in Europe share with Jews of Mizrahi heritage and with no one else, haplotypes that point to a Levantine common origin; uninterrupted genealogical and historical documentation tracing Jews everywhere to the land of Israel; ancient artifacts and sites confirming Jewish traditional accounts of Israel as the cradle of the Jewish civilization; and the centrality of the land and Jerusalem in particular in Jewish worship. The professor, who touts the scientific method and the integrity of changing one's view in light of evidence, has given no indication she intends to shift her understanding of reality in light of the robust evidence of Jewish Levantine origins and attachment.

Couple Feeling Pressure To Have Same Loud, Shallow Wedding As Everyone Else (PreOccupied Territory)

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party Hod HaSharon, December 30 - A woman and her fiancé acknowledged this afternoon that while the two of them much prefer an intimate, wholesome celebration to accompany their upcoming nuptials, their social circle and the industry surrounding the production of their affair have aroused a sense of shame in failing to throw the gaudiest affair they can afford and then some, lest anyone get the wrongheaded idea that the event marks the start of a bedrock institution of any stable society and family instead of merely an excuse to get drunk and grope the waitstaff.

Shenhav Katz, 28, and Lior Zakenn, 30, confessed their misgivings Thursday about the wedding they plan for this coming March. The couple announced their engagement over the summer and set about making arrangements, discovering along the way that they shared a simple sensibility in celebratory occasions: small family gatherings in someone's home, rather than lavish catered affairs. Knowing that a wedding calls for more elaborate fare and a wider circle of invitees, Katz and Zakenn agreed on a wedding hall in this Tel Aviv suburb, while establishing that they intend to keep the music, boozing, and consequent shenanigans to a minimum. Disappointed, even horrified, reactions from relatives and friends in the meantime, however, have given the couple pause.

"'You mean you're not going to wear the flashiest, sexiest, most expensive gown?!' I swear, that was the first response I got," recalled Katz, who plans to wear a conservative, heirloom dress that once belonged to a beloved great-great aunt, a Holocaust survivor. "It's almost as if people think this is about partying down, which of course is an important element, but that there's no more than token space for tradition, commitment, or basic dignity."

"My friends' first reaction was to ask about the bachelor party," added Zakenn. "Where did they get that from? I've never been the boozing type, and when I do go to parties I'm all about the food and the conversation. Shenhav and I met through volunteer work in the community. I know my various friends' weddings were... festive, I guess you'd call it, but that's not my thing. But now they've given us this sense that unless we do as they did, blowing tens of thousands of shekels on a big-name DJ, flowing alcohol, kitschy party favors, an interminable slide show that everyone secretly hates, and a million other superficial things, we've deprived ourselves, or them, or something, and we're not really married? I have no idea what's happened here."

Focus On Family, Community Rather Than Palestine Makes Man Obvious Racist (PreOccupied Territory)

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black father Hempstead, December 26 - A local small-business proprietor who devotes his time and resources to nurturing his children, enriching his marriage, caring for his aging parents, volunteering at a nearby soup kitchen, running fundraisers for area schools, and participating in initiatives to keep the streets of his hometown clean and safe, instead of following the exhortations of prominent activists and putting the plight of Arabs living under Israeli governance six thousand miles away, must perforce disdain those Arabs as inferior to other humans, activists report.

According to those activists, Terrence Howell, 50, who runs Front Street Hardware - a franchise in the True Value chain - spends his non-work hours on family and community endeavors, and donates supplies from his business to local projects, such as last year when a neighborhood elementary school needed to perform emergency repairs to its student bathrooms, and Front Street Hardware provided various fixtures gratis. Moves of that nature, the activists conclude, in the presence of known pro-Palestine alternatives such as harassing Jews or donating to known terrorist groups, demonstrate Mr. Howell's racist sensibilities.

"It's not like Palestine is an obscure issue," explained Hofstra University Students for Justice in Palestine chapter head Latisha Holmes. "It's in the news practically every day. No one can claim not to know how urgent it is, or how important it is to make every issue about Palestine. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw from this man's pattern of behavior is that he regards Palestinians as racially inferior."

"It's internalized white supremacy," agreed Palestine Solidarity Campaign volunteer Holden Lamaar. "You'd think as a person of color himself, Howell would be sensitive to the racist implications of supporting anything that isn't Palestine. Everyone who knows anything knows that there can be no justice for anyone until there's justice for Palestinians, and it's we apologists for antisemitic terrorism who get to define 'justice.' That Howell disregards this axiom is damning enough. What is a pothole on his street compared to the suffering of Palestinian children at the hands of imperialist white supremacist Zionists?"

Holmes added that at a meeting of the local parent-teacher association, Howell voted in favor of allocating certain funds to extracurricular enrichment of children's science education, and not, as Holmes and a group of activists had lobbied, to have her lecture the children on the crucial topics of blaming Israel and Zionists for everything that's wrong with the world, and making the undoing of Jewish security the centerpiece of a fulfilling existence.

Family Makes Aliyah Just To Escape All-Pervasive Christmas Music (PreOccupied Teritory)

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Christmas music West Hempstead, December 19 - Saturation of the environment with "seasonal" songs has driven one homeowner in this Long Island hamlet, along with his wife and children, to pack up and move to Israel.

Adam Shulman, 30, told PreOccupied Territory today that the family's Aliyah, literally "ascent" in Hebrew, will take place next week, following what the father of three characterized as "year after year of the same musical assault on the ears and mind every time you walk into a store or turn on the radio, and it gets worse as time goes on." Shulman spoke to journalists as movers loaded the family's furniture and other possessions into a truck for shipment to Haifa, and thence by truck to the community of Efrata, south of Jerusalem, where they hope to find an environment blessedly devoid of lyrical references to silent nights, coming faithful, red-nosed reindeer, and bearded folk figures coming to town after making lists and checking them twice.

"Three years ago, Tehilla and I resolved to escape this jingle-hellscape," he recalled, nodding to his wife of eight years. "We always knew we wanted to live in Israel, and had a vague plan to get there, but that was when we started to make concrete arrangements, because neither of us could stomach the prospect of another slog through the pre-Christmas season each time Thanksgiving rolls around. It's bad enough that a couple of our neighbors put up their decorations in October. Our original shipment and flight reservations were for this past summer, but COVID complicated things and we've been forced to endure more than half of this year's music. At least we're getting out before it peaks next week."

The Shulmans' destination community of Efrat, a few minutes south of Jerusalem, boasts a sizable contingent of English-speakers, many of recent American extraction. Most immigrants to the town of about 11,000 chose the locale for ideological reasons, either because of the political and spiritual significance of living in the ancient Jewish heartland in the face of international opposition to Israel's control of the area, or because they believe Jews belong in Israel and simply found Efrat convenient and affordable. Tehilla and Adam, however, while acknowledging the influence of Zionism in their "modern orthodox" Jewish upbringings, talked mainly of getting the hell out of the dystopian world of commercialized paganized acoustic assaults.

"It's not even that it's all Christian and we're not," explained Tehilla, 28. "I used to love watching the fire department drive 'Santa' around the streets on its biggest truck, waving at all the kids, even while I knew we weren't really part of the celebration. It was all kind of sweet, kind of wholesome. The music has just become unbearably omnipresent. We're out of here."

No one has yet informed the Shulmans that Jewish holiday music in Israel is fast approaching similar saturation as the respective festivals approach, and that said music has even less to recommend it.

IDF Detention Facilities Rampantly Assuming Gender Of Palestinians (PreOccupied Territory)

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prison Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem, December 9 - Human Rights groups accused Israel's military today of inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees, including such unnecessarily harsh measures as simply presuming that prisoners who talk, dress, act, and have anatomy in the manner of males are in fact males.

Amnesty International, Btselem, and Human Rights Watch, among others, issued a joint statement Thursday charging that the Israel Defense Forces, in violation of all things sacred and acceptable, assume the gender of every single inmate or detainee, a policy that underscores the cruel nature of the occupation and the urgent need to end it.

"This sadistic practice continues despite robust public awareness of the need to accommodate non-cisgender people," the statement read, in part. "We acknowledge our disappointment, but not our surprise, given Israel's established reputation for mistreatment of Palestinians." The document also cited the IDF's practice of not allowing Palestinians to stab Israelis, and even of applying lethal force in thwarting Palestinian attempts to kill Jews.

Progressive organizations followed up the letter with an online drive to get activists outside Israel to convey to their governments the importance of addressing the crucial issue of misgendered Israeli prisons, perhaps conditioning military aid to the beleaguered Jewish State on the implementation of a robust, independently-verified gender inclusiveness program in all military detainment facilities.

Palestinian activists embraced the statement and its overseas ripples. "Uh, yeah, that's uh, terrible," objected a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs. "Truly horrifying. Can't believe they'd be so, uh, evil. I can't imagine the horror our brave martyrs-to-be face day in, day out in those prisons. Sounds like pure torture. Somebody ought to do something."

A Hamas representative told reporters the movement would probably wait to declare another Day of Rage over the issue. "It's just that our schedule is so full of Days of Rage in the next few months," he lamented. "We wouldn't want to dilute the power of each Day of Rage, and its impact on the occupier, by holding another one in so short a time. An issue of this, er, importance deserves its own discrete... treatment."

The spokesman then requested more specifics about the phenomenon of "misgendering," and, upon receiving explanation, wondered aloud why the supposedly cruel IDF didn't do what he and his movement would have done, namely to hurl the identifying-as-female detainee from the nearest ten-story rooftop. "Something doesn't add up here," he cautioned.

By My Calculations, We Only Need To Sacrifice Three Hundred More Children And Palestine Will Be Free (PreOccupied Territory)

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By My Calculations, We Only Need To Sacrifice Three Hundred More Children And Palestine Will Be Free

by Itbah al-Yahud, PhD candidate, Al-Quds University

nerd Abu-Dis, December 3 - Sir, I've come close to finishing these equations, and I've some exciting news: it looks like we only need to throw a few hundred more children into battle against the Zionist enemy, and Palestine will be restored to its legendary glory when Jews were an underclass!

Just look at this, sir. I've double- and triple-checked my calculations, and it's clear as day: somewhere between three and four hundred Palestinian children have to die when we put them out in front during any of our confrontations with Israeli security forces, and then, as you can see from this graph, the parabolic function kicks in and all the Jews get pushed into the sea in a matter of months.

Let me elaborate. It doesn't have to be literally out in front during a face-to-face confrontation, though of course those count toward the total. This area, where you can see the coefficient effects emerge, demonstrates that placing children in harm's way, in a general sense, in the context of conflict with the Occupation, will produce congruent progress toward freedom. That obviously includes children who die because Israel blew up a Hamas position or stockpile, but it also includes children who die when our own weapons fall short, misfire, or malfunction.

You don't have to be a tactical expert to realize that makes success so much more attainable and likely. With a modicum of planning, we can hit, even surpass, that threshold in the next Gaza conflict! We really have to get this paper to the leadership in Gaza - better yet, in Doha and Ankara, perhaps our friends in Tehran - so they can make optimum use of it.

There is one thing I still need to figure out, though, and I'd love some guidance, sir. In defining "children," I remain unsure which data set to use: the legal definition of "child" prevalent throughout the world, which by and large pertains to those under the age of eighteen? Or our propaganda-definition of children, which includes basically everybody? Because my initial assumptions and variables use only the restrictive definition. The numbers might not work the same way if you have to plug in everyone that NGOs and Ministry of Health claim was a child killed by Israeli fire. I need at least a few more weeks if those are the parameters to use, and I can't guarantee coherent results.

Either way, though, we an look forward to glorious martyrdom for our kids. I postulate that there's nothing more precious!

Israel Racist For Not Wanting To Drink Gaza Sewage From Mediterranean (PreOccupied Territory)

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: Credit: James Grellier via Wikipedia

Ashkelon, November 25 - Activists denounced the Jewish state again today over its discriminatory attitudes and policies, in this case over the latter's refusal to operate a desalination plant just up the coast from where a Hamas-governed territory dumps untreated wastewater into the sea, a refusal that the activists say provides further evidence of Israel's view of Palestinians as "dirty" or "inferior" and therefore worthy of exploitation.

Representatives of Human Right Watch, Btselem, and others from within Israel, within the Palestinian Territories, and around the world accused Israel today of racism in its handling of the millions of gallons of raw sewage that flows from the Gaza Strip into the Mediterranean, which causes Israel not to operate the desalination plant near this coastal city. The groups called on the international community to pressure Israel into reversing the decision, thereby destroying the plant and depriving its people of drinking water even when the sea remains clean.

"Palestinian sewage is just a pretext for this bigoted behavior," insisted Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch. "If anything, Israelis should be drinking that raw sewage regardless of desalination, because I don't like them and I think they should be made to suffer because of my prejudices."

A Btselem activist explained that the refusal to desalinate sewage-contaminated water from Gaza goes beyond the mere insult of deeming Palestinian sewage unfit for Israeli consumption. "The hurt is magnified because until Zionism came along, forcing Jews to drink Muslim wastewater, whether figuratively or literally, was the norm in the region," observed Mashka Biyuv. "The institutionalized power of the Zionist state, embodying as it does the emancipation of Jews from underclass status under Muslim domination, defiantly not taking in Gaza's wastewater, is a bitter pill to swallow, so to speak. It's merely the latest manifestation of malignant Zionist arrogance that harms Palestinians."

Gaza lacks sufficient facilities to process sewage, a situation that human rights activists blame on an Israeli blockade aimed at keeping war materiel from reaching the militants factions that thrive in the territory, and which attack Israel with rockets and other weapons they smuggle into Gaza, or manufacture with imported materials. Those materials include pipes that would otherwise function as components of proper sewage treatment infrastructure, but end up as parts of locally-made rockets. The activists further explained that since the Palestinian leadership sees no problem harming its own people in order to hurt Israel, and international activists such as the BDS movement see no problem in harming Palestinians economically just to pursue symbolic moves against Israel that fail to harm her economically, Israeli must suffer to spare Palestinians from feeling the shame inherent in the diminution of their once-superior status vis-à-vis Jews.

Ministry Of Culture Puzzled By Grant Request For Non-Anti-Zionist HaBima Play (PreOccupied Territory)

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Habima Jerusalem, November 18 - Officials and clerks at Israel's chief government body for support of the arts voiced confusion today upon receipt of an application to fund a production of a show at the country's most venerable and prestigious theatrical venue - but one that, unlike every other production in that establishment, does not question, challenge, undermine, or ridicule Judaism or the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland.

Functionaries at multiple levels of the Ministry of Culture and Sport acknowledged Thursday they continue not to grasp the bizarre application for a grant to help the Habima Theater Company produce Idit Avrahami's play Sultan's Breakfast, a drama the takes place primarily in a kindergarten, and that explores gender roles, child-adult dynamics, the border between a child's perception and reality, and other themes, with a thick layer of warm humor pervading the script. A spokesman for the ministry told reporters they still did not know what to make of the prospect of funding an artistic event without anti-Zionist or anti-religious connotations, explicit or implicit.

"We're still trying to figure this thing out," admitted Theater Division chief Meza Nin. "When the application first came in, we thought something was missing. One of our mid-level officials recognized the play - I think her cousin helped edit it or something - and she stood there for what must have been a full minute, dumbfounded. Something just didn't add up. When she finally recovered the ability to speak, she said, 'I don't think we've ever done this before.'"

"That's not strictly true," remarked Assistant to the Deputy Minister Masha Bim. "Early on, the ministry wouldn't go near anything with even a whiff of anti-Zionism. Anti-Judaism was OK, as long as it was directed at Haredim or unspecified 'extremists.' But that went out the window in the 1980's and 90's. A new, progressive generation of officials began to throw their weight around, bringing in sensibilities that didn't grow from a sense of Israel's existential precariousness, and who saw such concerns as primitive and parochial. Fast forward a few years, and no one knows how to make heads or tails of an exhibit, show, or event that accepts Jewish tradition as valid, let alone valuable, or that sees the State of Israel as a net good."

No official decision on the funding application has issued yet; the deadline for such a decision lies two months away. In the meantime, ministry personnel indicated, HaBimah executives will be interrogated as to what the hell they have in mind.

Investment Firms Compete For Best Stock-Picking Monkeys (PreOccupied Territory)

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monkeys Tel Aviv, November 14 - Securities brokerages and bourse research companies in Israel's financial and commercial capital began to implement new recruitment procedures today, in reaction to findings that primates picking securities investments at random do at least as well, and sometimes better, at selecting holdings that will appreciate, than expensive analysts do: the hiring of various apes and monkeys to perform that selection, a strategy that the firms anticipate will result in both greater investment profitability and lower staffing and management costs.

Solomon-Zigri, Eshel Holdings, and Green Trust, three of Israel's largest firms handling trade on the Tel Aviv Securities Exchange, each disclosed today that they will replace most of their research and analysis departments with rhesus monkeys and similar creatures, now that the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Health have approved the use of primates in the necessary roles, effective today. The three largest such firms joined a number of smaller operations who announced last week they will undertake the switch on a probationary basis for six months.

Asaf Benn, a vice president with Eshel-Zikri, explained the rationale in an interview conducted via Zoom. "Experts have known for many years that monkeys pick stocks as well as experienced analysts," he observed. "But big organizations adapt slowly. A younger generation of executives now runs the main TASE brokerage houses, and they're willing to make changes their elders were too conservative to implement."

Sigal Green of Green Trust added that her firm maintains close contact with a research facility that conducts experiments comparing the stock-picking abilities of different species of fauna. "We went with the rhesus monkeys because that's what the initial research used," she explained. "But there's no inherent reason to stick with rhesus monkeys, with monkeys or apes in general, or even vertebrates. There was apparently a dog or something in Italy that successfully picked the winners of various sporting events with remarkable accuracy. Right now we have our eye on goldfish, which would involve significant turnover of... well I guess you'd call it personnel. Inventory? Whichever, it would still offer significant savings over even the monkeys, which require a specialized work environment, specific care, the works."

Market observers remarked that Israel's innovative reputation now extends beyond agricultural, internet, and defense technologies. "People treated the monkey thing as amusing dig at expensive research and money management services, not of practical significance," recalled investment analyst Fidu Czieri. "Leave it to Israelis to say, 'Hey, well, why not try that?'"