Here’s a nice educational site.

A few of my favorites of the “top ten facts you need to know”

1. In the summer of 2000, Israel offered the Palestinian Arabs 97% of the land they claim to be fighting for, making Israel the first and only country ever to offer the Palestinian Arabs a homeland. This offer was rejected with no counter-offer from the Palestinians.

6. Three major attempts to destroy Israel have been carried out by the Arab World: in 1947, 1967, and 1973. Although many neighboring Arab countries today still wish to destroy Israel, Israel still seeks peace. Israel has forged peace agreements with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), and has lived in peace with these countries ever since.

7. The West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza were never controlled by any Palestinian government or organization until 1993, when Israel agreed to give the Palestinian Authority certain controls under the Oslo Peace accords.

9. There have been roughly as many Jews displaced from Arab Nations as Arabs displaced from Israeli territory. Israel has absorbed the Jewish refugees, yet the Arab world refuses to accept the Palestinian Arabs into their countries.

Oh, there’s more. There’s a lot more.

Also, I came across this the other day:

“I dream of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it,” [Palestinian Foreign Minister] Zahar said in the interview. “I hope that our dream to have our independent state on all historic Palestine (will materialize).”

This dream, he added, “will become real one day. I’m certain of this because there is no place for the state of Israel on this land.”

Meanwhile the new Hamas government is appealing for international financial aid cause they’re, well… bankrupt.

In more ways than one, I might add.

Allison takes a deep breath and talks about Gaza.

Here’s the deal: when Fatah is in charge, Hamas and Islamic Jihad hurl Kassam rockets at Israel. When Hamas is in charge, Fatah hurl the rockets. Unless Fatah and Hamas have it out militarily and a winner is declared — the rocket-firing isn’t going to stop. Someone’s going to be tossing them. But I’m not supposed to wish civil war on them, right? That would be terrible. So I don’t.

Because as Jews we are taught not to wish ill on others. That is our teaching.

And so the rockets continue to get fired. Of course we Israelis aren’t going to sit around twiddling our thumbs and let them hurl rockets at us, and we shouldn’t — that’s not our style and no country can sit back and let its citizens be attacked. We’re going to fire back, and do everything we can to go after the people who are hurling the rockets. And so we bomb and shell, which of course, instantly turns us into the evil bad guys in the eyes of the world.

I agree with Allison… it’s depressing. Terribly so. Makes you just want to duck under the covers and ignore it all.

But you don’t get stronger without getting out of bed and exercising. So I’m not going to be ignoring the world anymore. I’m going to go back to reading and learning everything I can… and I’m not going to keep quiet anymore.

Because Global is Local. This is my world.

Snatched from Good Ol’ Glenn

In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein’s long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president’s State of the Union address in January 2003.

I think that Mr. Hitchens is on to something. It looks like perhaps there was something to that now widely ridiculed assertion made by The President in the 2003 State of the Union Address.

But if all of this evidence was so overwhelmingly there, why the ridicule? From whence comes all this “Bush Lies, Who Dies” rhetoric?

For a start, someone produced a fake document, dated July 6, 2000, which purports to show Zahawie’s signature and diplomatic seal on an actual agreement for an Iraqi uranium transaction with Niger. Almost everything was wrong with this crude forgery—it had important dates scrambled, and it misstated the offices of Niger politicians.

Hmm. Interesting. Now why would anyone produce such a blatantly obvious forgery when no one looking at the actual situation could possibly see anything but sinister goings-on?

There seem to be only three possibilities here. Either a) American intelligence concocted the note; b) someone in Italy did so in the hope of gain; or c) it was the product of disinformation, intended to protect Niger and discredit any attention paid to the actual, real-time Zahawie visit.

Ahah. The plot thickens.

Read the whole thing. Not exectly a conspiracy theory (people are so fond of those nowadays) but definitely an interesting read.

So I’m working now for birthright israel, a Jewish organization which sends Jewish kids (”kids”= aged 18-26) on a one-time 10-day first trip to Israel. It was founded by Jewish philanthropists Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt and is funded through Jewish Federations, the Israeli Government, philanthropic foundations and individual donations. When I was 20 years old I took part in a birthright trip through my college’s Hillel chapter.

It was three months after September 11th. Back then it was easy to get a spot. We here in America were still scared shitless and in Israel the Intifada was picking up. Most people thought I was crazy. My Dad however (who witnessed the destruction of the Twin Towers firsthand while I was home in Brooklyn watching it on TV) said that right now New York is no safer than Israel and that there was no reason I shouldn’t go. Before I left, my best friend said the words “I love you” to me. Words he doesn’t say to me. I believe that he was thinking about the possibility that I might not come back.

But I did. And it was amazing. I mean truly amazing. I’ve heard and read many accounts of the experiences that young people have on their birthright trips, and everyone’s is different. Almost every story though shares the common theme of some sort of fundamental transformation on the part of the participant. Either the way they see Israel, or their Jewish identity, or their religious practice, or the Jewish people. Most kids who start off their trip feeling very unconnected to Judaism return with their Pintele Yid reignited. When I left I was already strongly identified as Jewish, my Jewish practice pretty firmly established. My transformation, what I gained, was connectedness with the land of Israel, and a real sense of kinship with the Jewish people. I met a Jewish woman from Scotland in a little shop in Jerusalem. I met a Jewish Israeli soldier who was born in Mexico. Everywhere I went was food that I could eat. Everywhere was Hebrew writing which has always been a strangely comforting sight for me. I felt safe. I felt protected. I was for the first time ever in my life in a place that was made for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I suggested to my roomate, Jewish on her father’s side, that she should apply. She responded that her parents would say that she was crazy to go to Israel and she’d have to agree with them. I started to try to convince her that Israel was very safe, and she responded that she would freak out whenever she got on a bus. I told her that birthright had their own busses andthat we were accompanied by soldiers at all times, and besides, you are probably as likely to get killed by a mugger or murderer here as by a terrorist in Israel. The fact that we needed the soldiers at all, she said, was proof that it was not safe, and that there is a difference between getting killed by a mugger and dying in a terrorist attack. (How I don’t know… either way you’re dead, right?)

Her response actually really upset me… not something I expected.

Today I read a post on Allison Kaplan Sommer’s blog,An Unsealed Room which is about life in Ra’anana where she lives, half an hour from Tel Aviv.

Now that tourism is picking up again, and the suggestion shouldn’t result in a look of utter horror like, “What, are you trying to get me KILLED?” — let me suggest that if you are interested in Israel, come see it. Not because it’s the epitome of Good or Evil, but because (hold your breath) …..it’s a lot of fun.

When you see Israel on the news, you see bloodshed. You know why? Because it’s the news. Because in America you’re not going to see the human interest fluff that happens in another country, you’re only going to see horror and gore. But you know what? You see that sort of stuff on the news about your hometown too. You can cope with it though, because you don’t usually chance to see it actually happening on the street as you walk to Yoga or whatever. But when you see violence on the news somewhere far away, it’s easy to imagine that that is what it’s like out on the street because you’ve never actually seen an Israeli street.

Do I have a point? Maybe. I think the point is don’t make judgements based on news and parents’ paranoia alone. Or maybe the point is to go to visit Israel. Or maybe the point is that I just really want to go back.