Apropos Of Nothing

Posting has been thin of late in part because of general busy-ness but also because I’ve been too emotional about the events to write about them very well. I need a certain degree of detachment to put together a solid post, and each time I try, I find myself venting rather than analyzing. I keep coming back to the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, whose release was the whole point of taking on Hezbollah, who have now been relegated to footnote status in this mockery of “peacemaking”. I think about their families, now entering the twilight-zone hell of not knowing where their sons/husbands/brothers/fathers are, not knowing what they are suffering, knowing only that they are at the mercy of their mortal enemies. All the families know is that their beloved is utterly alone, utterly friendless, and utterly powerless, and that this unimaginably horrific state of affairs could go on for years. My feelings about the cease-fire all come down to this: our prime minister stated as a primary war aim the retrieval of those two soldiers, and he stopped the war before accomplishing that goal. Over one hundred other soldiers are now dead, their families now in their own agonies of grief, but the two kidnapped soldiers are still in the hands of the enemy — an enemy that is busy rearming, courtesy of an Iranian blank check and an impotent UN. I can’t write about the cease-fire without coming back to those two soldiers, and as the greater political picture seems to require a broader view, I haven’t been able to write anything worthwhile at all.

But I’ve been so heartened by the conversation in the comments section. I really enjoy the readership of this blog and appreciate you, gentle readers, more than I can say. So just in case today really is the beginning of the End of Days, I wanted to be sure to raise a virtual glass to you and to promise, provided the day doesn’t end with a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem, more posts in the very near future.

I just had twins!!

This is the reason that blogging has been light lately. I gave birth to the babies in Jerusalem and we brought them home yesterday — a 7 lb son and a 7 lb 3 oz daughter to join our three-and-a-half year old boy. Now we’re busy trying to organize our house while the babies and I get up to speed on nursing.

I plan to continue with the blog as much as I can, but I suspect the subject matter might lighten up a bit. I’m too happy right now to dwell on the dark side of life.

My new daughter is resting in the crook of my left arm after a multi-course meal (chalavi, of course). I’d write more, but I find I keep pausing to stare at her. I wanted to pass along the good news and explain the mysterious quiet. Please continue to come by!

Gosh. There appears to be a consensus that I have been unduly harsh on Jill Carroll. On reflection, I can see that it is inappropriate to take a person directly at their word when they have been held captive in a state of what was almost certainly constant terror for three months. I’ll be very interested to hear what you have to say when you’ve been thoroughly debriefed, Ms. Carroll, and have gotten to spend time with your family. I hope you can put your appalling experience in the past as soon as possible.

I flipped my lid at your comments, as I explained in the previous post, because of their apparent erasure of the victim who suffered most grievously from your ordeal: your murdered translator, who was as unprotected as you and your driver were when you decided to explore a dangerous section of Baghdad without bodyguards. I recognize now that there was probably a good deal of calculation in the way you presented yourself in your pre-release video, and that it would have been unwise to bring up your kidnappers’ savagery while they were still pointing large weapons at your head. I blamed you squarely for the oversight and for that I apologize.

I would like to explain myself — not excuse myself, just clarify my reaction. I read the stories coming out of Iraq all the time, and am always horrified by the way the deaths of innocent locals are glossed over when those deaths are brought about by fellow Muslims. It particularly irks me the way those same voices in the media that are so quick to condemn the US forces for heartless and cavalier attitudes toward “collateral damage” can’t bring themselves to condemn Muslim terrorists for deliberately causing civilian losses. The bombers who target US soldiers while they are distributing candy to Iraqi children are an obvious example. Those children were instantly forgotten by the very people who purport to care profoundly for the Iraqi people. It’s hard to imagine anything more muddle-headed than identifying the Muslim terrorists who dole out violent death to Iraqis, whose whole raison d’etre is to steal from the Iraqi people any hope of a progressive, democratic, forward-looking, healthy future, as the great defenders of Iraqi citizens against the vile American occupier.

So when I read your words — your description of these evil thugs as “fighting the good fight” — and found no mention of your slaughtered colleague, I saw red. Perhaps it’s because I live where I live — in a place where the murder of our civilians is widely considered to be a fact of life that we should stop whining about — that I’m a little hypersensitive on the subject of locals dying at the hands of terrorists and being instantly forgotten.

I’m very glad you are safe, Ms. Carroll, and wish you a speedy recovery from your ordeal. I hope your time as public relations officer for the mujahideen will be brief, but I recognize that it is not for me to dictate the duration of your recovery.

Jill Carroll has this to say about the Iraqi terrorists who kidnapped her and held her captive for three months:

“[Their decision to free her] just shows that the mujahedeen are good people fighting an honorable fight, a good fight. While the Americans are here, the occupying forces, you know, treating the people in a very, very bad way.”

She has apparently entirely forgotten Allan Enwiyah, her 32-year-old interpreter, who was shot to death in front of her by these fine human beings. It’s as though he never was.

Everyone seems eager to absolve Carroll of this revolting oversight by assigning her a case of Stockholm Syndrome. I’d be more inclined that way myself were this not the umpteenth case of left-leaning ex-hostages taking advantage of their sound bytes to extol the virtues of the bullet-spraying, bomb-detonating, head-chopping, Iraqi-child-killing murderers and simultaneously take swipes at the Americans. All reality goes in the toilet if an opportunity presents itself to condemn the United States. This woman is supposed to be a journalist; one might expect her to be a mental step or two ahead of, say, the Christian activists who are wont to defend Islamic fundamentalists in advance of their being murdered by them. Yet she blinds herself just as eagerly to the fact that her kidnappers, far from being defenders of the Iraqi people, despise the Iraqi people — people like her unlucky and disgracefully unlamented translator.

Please forgive my lack of proper journalistic reserve. Allan Enwiyah is on my mind right now, not foolish young Jill Carroll, and I’m very angry.

My apologies for the quiet: I had an ailing child at home all last week, which dropped computer time way down on the priority list. I’m very glad to say he is fully restored and back at gan (nursery school).

The most striking event of the past week was the — how shall I put it? — transitioning of the murderers of Israeli MK Rehavam Ze’evi from a Palestinian prison in Jericho, from which they were about to be sprung, into Israeli custody, where they belong. It’s an interesting story on many levels — the strikingly abrupt departure by the British and American monitors who finally lost patience with the refusal of the Palestinian Authority to uphold its obligation to protect them; the hissy fit thrown by Mahmoud Abbas, which was chutzpadik even for him (accusing the Brits and Americans of reneging on a deal he’d been reneging on since it was inked); the remarkably good timing of the IDF action from the point of view of Olmert’s Kadima party (which begs the question whether the monitors’ departure really was quite as strikingly abrupt as it seemed from the outside); the candy-ass response of the murderers’ PFLP buddies back in the territories (running around grabbing foreigners, making dopey comments to the media, releasing the foreigners and then fading instantly back into the woodwork); the non-response of Hamas to the PFLP mayhem (perhaps an homage to the uselessness of the Fatah police in the days when it was Hamasniks running amok), and more. As I say, I was too involved with nursing my little one to blog about this, but Daniel has a good comprehensive piece on it that should fill in the blanks for you.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual in Gaza. Masked Palestinian gunmen today murdered 25-year-old Palestinian Ahmed Naseem for the alleged crime of collaboration. (As we have seen, that term is used blanketly by Palestinians to whack their brethren for a wide variety of other reasons, so who knows why this poor kid is dead.) Six other Palestinians were wounded today by roving gunmen who shot up the Gaza City police station and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (these “miitants” were expressing frustration at late paychecks, apparently). More shooting took place on the north-south Gaza highway, at a power station and at a military hospital.

I am battling the mother of all headcolds and have been unable to do much productive work for a week or so. I have a number of blog entries gestating in my head and will zip them out at the earliest possible date.

Have to go do some Felix Unger-esque honking now…

Just saw on Instapundit that satire is thriving during the cartoon wars:

Dear Muslim Man Complaint Box,

Hey, I don’t know if you noticed, but my entire family lives in a f**king bomb crater eating leaves all day. I know Death to Israel, Death to America and all that but do you think you could take a look at installing a floor in my crater or something? I’m on your side, I’m Muslim, I just think we need to prioritize better. Maybe ease back on the “death to X” stuff and look into paved roads and running water. When I can afford to buy a car I promise to load the trunk full of fertilizer and drive it into a Jewish wedding. Let’s just get me to the “buy a car” part first.

I managed to squeak through into the finals of the JIB Awards in one category: Best Post. Please have a look at it if you have a moment — you can find it here — and if you like it, please vote for it here.

Same rules apply: it’s kosher to vote every three days between today and February 2, when ballots will close.

Many thanks again.

Today is the last day to vote in the preliminary round of the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards. The final tally at the end of today will decide who is a finalist.

I’m being pretty soundly trounced all around (that Politics tally really hurts!), but there’s a category or two in which it’s not impossible for me to squeak into the top six (which would make me a finalist). If you’ve been enjoying the blog, please pop over and cast your vote for Apropos of Nothing in these categories: Best Post, Best Overall, Best Politics, and Best New Blog.

If you’ve voted before, please do so again. (The rules permit multiple votes.)

Okay, I’ll try to stop blushing now…(how do politicians do this?)…

Yee haa!! I’m finally a real member of the blogosphere: I’ve been tagged by a meme. (Isn’t that a great phrase?)

Daniel in Brookline, who did the tagging, calls this the “Four by Four” meme. Here goes:

1. Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
· sweater folder at Benetton
· writing teacher
· person who tried twice to write a mystery novel and is now permanently devoted to nonfiction
· financial editor at an investment bank (much more interesting than it sounds – crazy deadlines, yes, but I was working with funny, smart people all day; what could be better?)

2. Four movies I could watch over and over:
· A Sunday in the Country (every frame looks like an Impressionist painting, and the main female character spends the whole movie in the perfect dress)
· Best In Show (truly hilarious)
· Adam’s Rib (my favorite costars and a charming portrait of a great marriage)
· The Rookie (in fact, I really do watch this movie over and over. I’ve shifted my baseball-loving three-year-old son from 61* [an all-time great] to The Rookie because he’s now at an age where he might start repeating the rampant swearing that is all over 61*. The Rookie is just as good – it’s loaded with good baseball [you should hear the way my son laughs every time we first see the Jim Morris character bring the heat] and it’s nice and wholesome. And it has the big advantage that Mommy gets to spend an hour and a half looking at Dennis Quaid.)

3. Four places I’ve lived:
· New York City
· Durham, North Carolina
· Washington, DC
· Oxford, England

4. Four TV shows I love to watch:
· Sex and the City
· The West Wing
· Northern Exposure
· The Odd Couple (the series with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall)
(As you can probably tell, I’ve completely stopped watching new TV.)

5. Four websites I visit daily:
· Pootergeek
· AL Daily
· Daniel in Brookline
· Normblog

6. Four of my favorite foods:
· my mother’s brisket with kasha varnishkes
· Mimrachit (an Israeli chocolate spread that is meant to be slathered on bread or pita, but that works just as well eaten straight off a spoon, especially on top of a nice blob of peanut butter)
· a large, juicy, perfectly done steak with a baked potato heaped with butter and sour cream (yes, both; you have a problem with that?)
· cappellini with white clam sauce (not something I ever have anymore now that I live in a shellfish-free zone, alas)

7. Four places I’d rather be
· The Four Seasons Hotel in New York City
· a well-heated, well-appointed cottage in New England with a full larder, a roaring fire and a big, friendly dog
· a big Southern house (wraparound porches, French windows, hardwood floors, multiple fireplaces, huge, well-equipped kitchen) in North Carolina
· Paris

8. Four albums I can’t live without:
· Step Inside This House by Lyle Lovett
· At Li Laila by Boaz Sharabi
· O Quam Gloriosum by Tomas Luis de Victoria, sung by the Westminster Cathedral Choir (I’m pretty sure this is the most sublime thing I’ve ever heard)
· my recording of the novel Pigs Have Wings by P.G. Wodehouse (read by Jeremy Sinden)

Thanks, Daniel. That was fun!