Goodbye 33: Idiots' Delight

[February 7. Writing now is an exercise in futility. The computer has crashed. I cannot send or receive, and most terrifying, all addresses have disappeared. Nothing has come in since the 9th. Apologies to those of you whose emails were unanswered.

There might be some grim satisfaction in knowing someone thought me important enough to attack with a virus. Alas, it is my own incompetence that’s to blame. Nobody around here seems able to fix it. My son has promised to take a crack at it, but no date is set.]



[Lord of the Challahs: The Last Stand. Yes, this sounds like one of those sagas that go on forever. Hopefully this will be the last chapter, for a while.

One morning last week Rachel found six or seven chunks of bread on our front lawn. I took this as a declaration of war and planned to retaliate. Fantasies about hidden cameras catching him in the act were quickly abandoned. Costly and pointless. The Hurler is a Yemenite revered for his piety, I a crippled curmudgeon avoided for my nastiness. Even if caught in the act he would get the sympathy of most.

But I had to retaliate, if only to secure my reputation as Le Misanthrope. The opportunity presented itself when the Shas party, in which the Hurling Tzaddik is an active member, left plastic bags filled with election material – photos of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef modeling a selection of beachwear, a DVD guaranteeing a place in Paradise with numberless modestly attired virgins for every Shas voter, etc – at each resident’s door.

I filled the bag with the chunks of bread and hurled it on to the Hurler’s porch.
No agonizing over how to retaliate for the Tzaddik: The following morning our parking lot looked as if a bread delivery van had overturned during the night.

Comforting myself that the bread wasn’t on our lawn, I haven’t responded. So far, all quiet on the refugee camp front.]



GOODBYE 33: IDIOTS DELIGHT



It is February 8, two days to the election. By law there are no election ads or polling results allowed. But the media, pretending to simply report the news, are working overtime to boost Livni. She is shown smiling, dancing, confident, accepting the cheers of young supporters. Netanyahu, on the other hand, is shown frowning, nervous, clearly in distress. Barak is seldom seen, and Lieberman is demonized by constantly showing “moderate Arabs” concerned about his supposed racism.

I fear that Livni, expected to do badly, is being given a boost among the reported 20% of undecided voters. You in the States elected an empty suit who is at least articulate. We may elect an empty dress who has the intelligence of a gnat, the personality of a nit, the ideology of a newt.

Here in the refugee camp there will be a few votes for Lieberman from former Russians, a few for Shas [see above], a handful for Netanyahu. The majority will be divided between the National Union and the National Religious Party/Jewish Home. Just as the most savage fighting during the Russian Revolution took place between the Communists and Mensheviks and Social Democrats, all ostensibly in the same camp, so here among the refugees it is the NU and the NRP who are at each other’s throats. We tear down each other’s posters before the glue is dry. I am grateful for the entertainment.


February 9.

Rachel’s voting card arrived in today’s mail. Mine hasn’t. A voting card is not a requirement – your ID is all you need – but it tells you at which polling station you are registered. There are three polling stations in the refugee camp.

During Local Council elections last year I was sent from polling station to station, finally voting at the lone station in the Nitzan settlement on whose cherry tomato and watermelon fields the refugee camp is located.

Yes, there are telephone numbers to call to determine where you vote, but these – in my case, at least – invariably give out the wrong information.



February 10

What a glorious day for the charade of elections! Torrential rain, thunder and lightning all morning. It cleared until the evening, when the good stuff returned.

Rachel had no difficulty voting. Yours truly, as is traditional – and I am nothing if not traditional – was turned away at all three refugee camp stations, with the added indignity of having to suffer the smirks and pitying “pathetic bastard” smiles of the election workers. Humble Moshe is satisfied with having been able to provide them with some amusement.

Many calls, tears, arguments later – rumor has it my tale of woe finally elicited a papal dispensation from Pope Benedict – I voted in the Nitzan settlement. And that wasn’t simple, either. The polling station was located on a basketball court surrounded by open fields. The rains had turned the ground into a swamp here, a lake there. Locals were using canoes for the lake, stilts for the swamp. I simply slogged through, feeling – like Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen” – the leeches attaching themselves to my skin. The physical embodiment of my emotional life here…

Of course we stayed up for the results. That the Empty Dress outpolled Netanyahu is being described as a personal victory for her. Nonsense. It is simply the triumph of the media steamroller.

Even more nonsensical, the analysts [really, talking heads, as there is no analysis here] claim that Right wing parties netted 65 seats to 55 for the Left.

The so-called Right:

The Likud is headed by the invertebrate Netanyahu who has long declared his desire for a wide centrist coalition.

Shas and United Torah Judaism are for sale to the highest bidder. I would describe them as prostitutes but that would be unseemly given they do everything, as they see it, for the greater glory of the Almighty.

Israel Beitenu… A dear friend in Los Angeles asked me to compare Natan Sharansky and the Israel Beitenu leader Avigdor Leiberman. Both are tough Jews and former Russians. That ends the similarities. Sharansky is a thinker, a humanist, too honest and straightforward to succeed in Israeli politics. Leiberman is shrewd, ruthless, an ‘operator’ unencumbered by any ideology, perfectly suited to succeed here. He is a thug, but we thought of him as ‘our thug’. Just as we thought of Ariel Sharon as ‘our thug’…

National Religious Party/ Jewish Home. Despite the nationalistic patina, no different from Shas and United Torah Judaism. Actually they are different. They can be bribed for far less than Shas and United Torah Judaism.

Which leaves the National Union. Four seats, four lousy seats for the sole party ideologically and emotionally committed to The Land of Israel.

Rachel, ever optimistic, believes that most Israelis have been awakened by our expulsion from Gush Katif and the subsequent horrors that have befallen the country. I disagree. They are still sleepwalking, as the election results show. They remain uncommitted to anything other than a trouble-free existence. Can this be what our long and tortuous history has come down to?

After all the tough talk and conciliatory talk and preening and posing that pass for forming a coalition, we will end up with a government of the Practical Right, Practical Left, Practical Center. A government for which the demands of America, Europe, the UN, etc, are far more relevant than the demands of God. More or less what we had before: A government of national suicide.

See why I referred to the ‘charade’ of elections?



February 11

Rachel’s old school, the Ulpana, put on a play this evening, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. The venue was the auditorium in Bat Hadar, a community south of Ashkelon that serves as the administrative center for local farming communities.

Fortunately the performance was for women only, so I was able to smoke my brains out outside. It was a cold evening and I had done enough to destroy the ozone layer, so I went inside and sat down on a chair in a hallway.

After a while a scrawny black kitten approached. ‘Scrawny’ hardly does it justice. Like calling a skeleton ‘very slender’. The kitten was skin and bones, almost bald of fur, scarred, limping, her right eye a pink gash. For me it was love at first sight.

Even when she climbed on to my lap and leaked on my jeans, I remained exhilarated. We even share a weak bladder!

I found some milk among the intermission refreshments and petted her while she lapped it up. So passed one of the happiest hours in a very long time.

When the play ended and the crowd poured out of the auditorium the kitten disappeared.

February 16. My voting card arrived in today’s mail. The polling station listed is not the one in which I voted…



February 18

Is there no limit to our capacity for self-deception? Headlines today said “President Peres admits disengagement was a mistake”, and some here were relieved that one of the most prominent supporters of the expulsion acknowledged the injustice done to us.

But examining the text of his statement, we get an altogether different message. What he said was, there were mistakes made in the execution, and he concludes with “We should have done it differently”.

This afternoon I was asked to drive a neighbor to Bat Hadar, and wait while she dealt with some bureaucratic nonsense. I jumped at the chance, and used my time there looking for ‘my’ kitten. No sign of her. Perhaps it’s just as well. Now she can remain a happy memory.

La Passionara and I are off for a week of R’n’R at the Terminally Ill Sea from Sunday, the 22nd. Make good use of our silence: read a book, rob a candy store, mug an old person. Anything socially useful…

moshe