Going Home

Posted on: November 25th, 2012

Israeli soldiers were packing up their gear as they leave their staging area near the Gaza border, on the first day of the ceasefire, Friday, November 22, 2012. This morning the Likud is holding its primaries, to select a list of candidates for the Knesset. I sincerely hope that at least those Likud members who [...]

Group Effort

Posted on: November 23rd, 2012

These IDF soldiers decided to express how they felt about their political leadership using their most precious possessions: their uniform-clad bodies. So they got together and formed the words “Bibi Loser” in the sand. It’s grammatically incomplete, and the use of Hebrew letters to write an English statement is questionable, but there’s no doubt about [...]

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Happy to Death

Posted on: November 22nd, 2012

Gotta’ love the following Ma’an Palestinian news agency report: One Citizen Dies and 3 wounded by Gunfire Celebrating the Victory of the Resistance Gaza – Ma’an – A citizen died and 3 others were wounded in shooting in the air to celebrate the victory of the resistance. A government spokesman for the Ministry of Health [...]

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The Hazards of Prayer

Posted on: November 21st, 2012

I’m looking at the picture of this IDF soldier davening Shmoneh esreh in the fields outside Gaza, and I’m thinking: what’s going on here? Was the tank there before he bowed (in the first or one-before-last) blessing? Is that what happened? And when he rises, all nice and ready to proceed with his communing with [...]

Setting Up Child Murder

Posted on: November 20th, 2012

Here’s a picture of a Hamasnik with his toddler boy on an outing together. Daddy appears well prepared for battle with the ruthless Zionist occupiers — baby boy not so much. Do Arab parents love their children? Yes. Is the man in this picture out of his mind, exposing his child to certain death? Also [...]

Safe Hallways

Posted on: November 20th, 2012

Israeli citizens are instructed to take shelter in the hallways and stairways of their apartment buildings after warning sirens sound, signaling an incoming rocket. We in the Tel Aviv area have not experienced this kind of thing since 1990. Our animals are particularly perplexed: it looks like we’re out on a walkie, but then no [...]

Drawing with Rockets

Posted on: November 19th, 2012

In years to come, when peace reigns, maybe sky drawing with rockets will become its own art genre. For now, these appear to be the trails of Arab rockets shot at Israel and the Iron Dome rockets that rise to meet them. And together they form a Star of David. We could try for a [...]

Shabbes Schlaf

Posted on: November 18th, 2012

An Israeli soldiers attending a training simulation of the ground war in Gaza, at a training base near Mount Hebron, Shabbat, November 17, 2012. It’s been a tense Shabbat, up here, outside the range of the Hamas rockets. Although, supposedly, two rockets fell in Rammat HaSharon, well north of Tel Aviv and only about ten [...]

The Art of Sheltering

Posted on: November 16th, 2012

This is the neonatal unit of the bomb-sheltered section of Barzilai hospital, down in Ashkelon. When the rockets start flying overhead, and sirens start blasting in response, the hospital staff moves the critical care patients and the babies, incubated and everyone else, to the secure area, under layers of fortified cement. It’s a very complicated [...]

Did Anybody Say ‘The Children of Gaza?’

Posted on: November 15th, 2012

A runaway hit twit right now is this one: “Hamas Bumper Stickers: Baby Suicide bomber on board.” And a joke that’s getting old already goes: Two Palestinian mothers watch their children playing and one of them sighs and says, “They blow up so fast.” The image I picked this morning is of Arab children visiting [...]

Vantage Point

Posted on: November 14th, 2012

This is a picture of President Barack Obama watching the Vice Presidential debate aboard Air Force One with members of his staff, en route from Florida to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. It was taken Oct. 11, 2012, when to the rest of us the campaign looked wide open, with a slight advantage to the Republicans. [...]

King James II

Posted on: November 13th, 2012

This is a portrait of King James II by Nicolas de Largillière, c. 1686. James II was King of England and Ireland, and also doubled under the name James VII as King of Scotland. His reign began on February 6, 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, [...]

Golan Heights Wind Farm

Posted on: November 12th, 2012

The Golan Heights Wind Farm is located 3,150 ft. above sea level on Mount Bnei Rasan, three miles south of Quneitra in the Golan Heights. In other words, just a stone’s throw away from the bloodiest civil war raging in the region. It was the first wind farm ever built in Israel, back in 1992. [...]

The Most Beautiful Picture of Israelis Ever Shot

Posted on: November 9th, 2012

The two men in this picture are Chief of Operations for the Southern Front Yitzhak Rabin and Southern Front Commander Yigal Allon, in 1949. It’s a cold day somewhere on the dunes east or south of Gaza. Neither man has slept much, which is evident from Rabin’s messy hair. Alon, four years older and considered [...]

Humble Pie

Posted on: November 8th, 2012

Now, there’s a fine exercise in the diplomatic niceties one must endure when one is prime minister of a small state in the near east, surrounded by enemies, with few friends to spare, and one’s favorite candidate has come up short. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) met on Wednesday with U.S. ambassador to Israel [...]

Don’t Drink Alone

Posted on: November 6th, 2012

It occurred to me that with so much of this website being devoted to politics and the Islamist threat, we should probably use some of our space contemplating the simple pleasures of life. So, today, when both the United States of America and the NRP-Bayit Yehudi Party are facing the vote that will decide their [...]

Uprooted

Posted on: November 5th, 2012

Liad Arussy sent us this image of a collapsed tree in Fair Lawn, NJ, after Hurricane Sandy. She wrote: “Once stood so strong, now fallen in shame.” Lying on its side, the tree is not dead, and the slab of grassy soil that was lifted along with its roots is alive, too, only not upright. [...]

All that Training Pays Off

Posted on: November 4th, 2012

This is the picture of an overworked, dead tired officer somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, who picked up his megaphone and began to try and talk some sense into Sandy, the ravaging hurricane. The image has gone a bit viral, and so we’re doing our little bit to help it along. [...]

Recharge Your Neighbor

Posted on: November 2nd, 2012

I visited my friend Ed Litvak’s news website thelodownny.com, for news from the old neighborhood following Sandy. Among the reports I ran into this image, of Seward Park Co-op residents helping each other recharge their laptops and phones. Meanwhile, those co-op residents (which are about one-third Jewish and half of that frum) have put aside [...]

Majestic Destroyer

Posted on: November 2nd, 2012

Reader Jonathan Kahanovitch sent us this amazing image of Ms. Liberty under a canopy of ominous clouds. Destruction can be so pretty. Hope you’re dry and safe and that you have electricity and Internet. Otherwise, we probably won’t be having this conversation. Shabbat Shalom.