At a time when French Jews are fleeing France at levels not since the Vichy Government....

The word chutzpah is often mistranslated to characterize someone exhibiting ‘nerve’ or ‘gall’ but chutzpah is more than just galling or nervy behaviour.  

 Think of a thief who calls the police to lay a complaint that someone has stolen his own illicit stash of ill-begotten loots. That’s chutzpah.

Applied to the world stage, a  man who wrote a doctoral thesis steeped in holocaust denial and is rumoured to be the bag man who helped finance the PLO’sterror attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics against the Israeli Olympic team attending a French anti-terror march - now that’s real chutzpah.

The Queen’s English

When I was in grade school there was a great deal of emphasis on the ‘Queen’s English’.  As Canadians, we took pride in using the Queen’s English in spelling, grammar and pronunciation. Writing ‘colour’ as ‘color’ was guaranteed you would be given a big red ‘sp’ that ripped across the word and counted as a spelling mistake on your papers or tests. Being able to express yourself in a comprehensible and logical form in the Queen’s English was considered the pinnacle of literacy.   

I think it can be safely suggested the British government no longer officially speaks a comprehensive or logical form of the Queen’s English. Forward:

A new United Kingdom government report showed significant progress being made in combating anti-Semitism.  The “Government Action on Anti-Semitism” report, published Monday by the Department for Communities and Local Government, noted advances despite a surge of incidents this summer during Israel’s military operation in Gaza. In July and August, there were 543 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.K., more than the entire previous year. Incidents included physical assaults, vandalism and graffiti.

If the British government can issue a report on Anti-Semitism and show ‘significant progress being made in combat ant-Semitism’, and still note there was a surge (aka an increase) in anti-Semitic incidents from one year to the next…well, the Queen's English isn't what it use to be.

Once again I am late to the party, but not as late as the Israeli public.

The one positive thing I can say about living in Canada in the winter is that it becomes the best excuse for staying in bed, under the covers, reading.  No one will accuse you of being a slacker for lying around the house reading when the temperature is minus anything. Of course, the sale prices of hard cover non-fiction books during the ‘silly season’, also helps. 

My reading list this year is definitely Israeli-centric. Biographies on Menachem Begin, Rav Kook, and Professor Yuval Harari’s “Sapiens” (my Israeli friends have been raving about him for quite some time),  and I finally broke down and bought a of Ari Shavit’s ‘My Promised Land’. I am not far enough into the book to even begin to review it, but just in case the liberal Zionist angst goes over the top of my kumbayah meter, I also picked up The Israeli Solution by Caroline Glick.  

I know Shavit’s book came out November 2013 but my tolerance towards Zionist liberal angst was far too low when everyone else was reading it (or when I thought everyone else was reading it, well, everyone but Israelis).  I will say this, I have been marveling in how readable Shavit’s use of English was - for a non-native “Angleet”…although, given what I learned today, I suspect there was an absolute genius of an editor cleaning up Shavit’s prose. In Tablet, I found an article quoting Shavit on the little oddity of his work not yet published in ‘Hebrew’.

 I asked Shavit why he wrote the book in English if his goal is to revitalize the lackluster Israeli polity, who, last I checked, spoke Hebrew. “A weird thing about Random House,” Shavit laughed, “is that for some reason they like to publish in English.” He went on to say that the book is for now written but unedited in Hebrew and will one day be released.

That quote was from last January 2014, but a column today at Israel Hayom offered up far more plausible scenario. 

Most Israelis know nothing about Ari Shavit's bestselling book, "My Promised Land: The ‎Triumph and Tragedy of Israel." Readers of Haaretz, where he's a columnist, may have seen it ‎mentioned in short articles celebrating Shavit's stateside success. But few Israelis have heard of ‎the book, and I'm guessing that only a handful have actually read it. That is because there is no ‎Hebrew edition.‎

Shavit wrote it in English for an American Jewish audience, upon the suggestion of David ‎Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. Haaretz at first reported that a Hebrew version would appear ‎at the end of 2013, and later that it would be published in the spring of 2014 (by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir). But ‎while the book has also appeared in Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, and Polish, there is no ‎sign of a Hebrew edition.‎

So Israelis have no clue that Shavit has added a massacre in the city of Lydda (Lod) to the litany ‎of Israel's alleged crimes in 1948. That's why I felt privileged to take part in a December 4 panel ‎on the conquests of Lydda and Ramla in 1948, sponsored by the Galili Center for Defense ‎Studies. The chairman of the center, Uzi Arad, suggested that I explain and analyze the claims ‎made by Shavit in his book, which I had already done in English for the web magazine Mosaic. (The ‎organizers also invited Shavit, but he was off collecting accolades in south Florida.)‎

I was youngest participant on the panel, and nearly the youngest person in the lecture hall, which ‎was full of veterans of Lydda and many other battles of 1948. These people are not historians, and ‎they do not necessarily know the big picture of how politics and military operations interacted. ‎They were not commanders (the officers are all gone); they were young soldiers in 1948, at the ‎bottom of the chain of command. They have also read a lot and shared recollections over the past ‎‎60-plus years, so you cannot always tell whether what they say about some episode is first-hand or ‎derives from something they read or heard. Finally, time erodes memory, as some are quite ‎prepared to admit.‎

Still, there were some very sharp minds in the audience -- people who know more about the ‎history of the 1948 war than anyone but a handful of expert historians. They know the ‎commanders, the military units, the weaponry, the battles, the geography, the chronology -- and ‎woe unto you if you make a mistake. They won't wait for the Q&A to correct you. The war to ‎establish the State of Israel was the great adventure of their youth, and they wear it as badge of ‎honor.‎

In my opinion, there really is only one plausible explanation for why Shavit’s book has yet to be translated or offered to the Israeli public in Hebrew. There are too many veterans still alive from the War of Independence – and veterans who probably took part in the battle at Lydda (Lod).  And if these veterans are anything like the veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade – they might sue Shavit and Random House into the next century.  Cause when you are actively massaging a potential ‘new improved’ historical narrative; it helps if there are no living peers to challenge or review your effort…

There is just something about Israel....

I was in Israel for the high holidays. Every time I go, I end up going somewhere different. This time I was in Ashkelon. The war had ended just a few weeks before. I did not tell my mother I was going, or where I was going to be before I left. Given that I live 1700 miles from my Mother it is relatively easy to get out of Dodge without her knowing. Oddly enough, at my age, I am still a child to my mother. The reason I did not tell her I was going was because she would beg me not to go. I know what she would say, it is what she always says, 'It's too dangerous, there was just another war, wait for peace and then go.' but for me, it is too dangerous not to go, and I will continue to go to Israel whenever the opportunity arises.

There is something truly odd but this place. I have never felt so safe as I do when I am there. When I am in Israel, I know I am home. I just regret that I did not come when I was young, but I did not, only because, when I was young, I listened my mother.

From Rafi at Life at Israel, I saw this clip. Daniel Gordis nails it. Now I really do have to buy his book on Menachem Begin.

Who knew this was what a Palestinian Victory looks like

A man who has a guaranteed free three meals a day, medical and dental care, a bed and a home for the next 40 or so years, claims Hamas won the war against Israel.

Sometimes there are no words...

...but sometimes a song.

A modern form of indentured servitude is a deeply flawed business model, but gee, how it does breed corporate entitlement.

As the outrage builds among Canadians against the Temporary Foreign Workers Program Corporate Canada goes on the offensive.

Restaurant Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses have all issues their threats – businesses will close, Canadians will lose jobs, the government will lose revenue – and the world as we know it will come to an end. Although, I am not sure how much of a revenue stream the government will lose given by placing a moratorium of Temporary Foreign Workers visas, given that I am taxed at a much higher rate than the current corporate tax rates of businesses in Alberta. But I digress.

What appalls me is this sense of entitlement that permeates throughout the business class of this country. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Globe and Mail's poster child of responsible corporate use of Temporary ForeignWorkers:

Uttam Dey, who owns the Green Chili chain of six Indian restaurants in Calgary, said almost all of his 22 cooks are temporary foreign workers – mainly with experience working in New Delhi and Dubai. With plans to open three new locations in the next year, the news that Ottawa is imposing a moratorium on restaurant hires of temporary foreign workers came as a shock.

“If I don’t get the visas, how am I going to open?” Mr. Dey said Friday. He said it’s almost impossible to find someone in Canada with skill as an Indian cook who’s not timid around his blisteringly hot 75,000 BTU clay ovens used to make naan bread and kabobs. He understands the concern if there’s abuses in the system, but said he plays by the rules and pays his workers fairly. “I’m not McDonald’s. I’m not Tim Hortons,” Mr. Dey said. “I’ve tried my level best to find Canadian cooks. I can’t find them.”

This is just so much wrong I am at a loss as to where to begin.

Green Chili operates a business in Canada, and allegedly wants Canadian customers to patronage his establishment using their hard earned Canadian wages to purchase his meals, but he is unable to find a single Canadian chef to hire to cook Indian cuisine out of a country of 37 million and must go outside the country to find chefs...who knew that Alberta lacks a single community college with a professional cooking program?

As incredulous as the above sounds, what galls me is the sense that the Canadian government must provide solutions for Mr. Dey's labour issues. It has somehow become the Canadian government's responsibility to ensure Mr. Dey has an adequate supply of his preferred chefs so he can continue to grow his business in the way he sees fit.


You know, there was a time when companies would think nothing of starting an apprenticeship program so that their business needs would always be met rather than relying on the government. Obviously, that is just old school thinking and is now completely without merit.

Mr. Dey claims he treats his Temporary foreign workers decently and pays them well, but fair treatment and decent pay are the kind of terms, which in my experience, are rather fluid by definition as in a beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder kind of way. 22 Chefs, and since, they have such a unique skill set, what's the going rate for decent pay?

Of course, if Mr. Dey, were to get sick or injured, he would probably thinking nothing of going to a local Canadian hospital and be treated by doctors licensed in Canada. And if, he had to get a prescription for medicine, he would expect to be able to go to a local drug store and buy medicine which was unexpired and duly regulated for sale in Canada by Health Canada. If a thief tried to rob his business, he would probably call 911 and expect Canadian police to attend his premises, and eventually prosecute the thief in the Canadian court system, but to hire a Canadian chef to cook in his restaurant...well, no.

We simply aren't up to his standards, and probably utterly untrainable besides. After all, it's our work ethics – not his.