Sun is life

Life

In about two weeks I am getting married and then I do not want to look like a pale sheet. Most people in Israel do not sun bathe at all. Swedes do. For natural reasons. People on the Scandinavian latitude get so limited sun hours that we desperately want to take advantage of them, and this is a habit that we do not easily put a side. This year I have not been really burned even once, but I am still developing my own bright golden tan. Not as much because of using sun screen, as for spending the appropriate amount of time in the sun, i.e. not too much at a time. Sun screen is a subject that I have touched previously, and therefore I do not need to go there again.

Yesterday we went to the pool with the kids after Yoram came home from work. Although we arrived at 17.00 and the sun was pretty low I was the only one on the compound who was sitting in the sun. A very self-conscious person would possibly feel like a complete outcast, but I really could not care less about what other people think. What I do know, is that the extreme cautiousness in very sunny countries like Israel instead causes vitamin D deficiency, which in turn causes diseases like Rickets and Osteomalacia. People are advised to stay out of the sun during midday when the sun is at its highest position, but this is also when the strongest induction of the production of vitamin D occurs. Again, overly protective ideas cause new problems down the line. Use your common sense and enjoy the sun. 15 minutes of midday sun is enough to get your necessary daily dose of vitamin D, and the natural source is so much better than drinking milk spiked with artificial vitamins. Since vitamin D is a lipophilic vitamin, over-ingestion can cause vitamin D toxicity.

Work with nature, not against it. We will never beat it.

My own gut morals

I know that speaking in terms of pre-1967 borders and Green line (1949 Armistice Agreements) has very little to do with a future drawing of the border between Israel and Palestine. The 1949 Armistice Agreements were intended to serve only as interim agreements until replaced by permanent peace treaties, and in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, the UN Security Council Resolution 242 clearly called for the establishment of “secure and recognised boundaries", created after negotiations.

Both Israel and the PA have agreed on land swapping, which means that the largest Jewish settlements along the Green line will be incorporated in Israel, while Palestine will get corresponding areas from Israeli land. Bottom-line is, that I know that not all settlements will have to evacuate, and I acknowledge a somewhat difference between people who are born and brought up in the largest well-established settlements very close to the Green line, compared to the fundamentalist youngsters who notoriously build new outposts deep into the West Bank. But what to do with a settlement like Ariel, which is so large that it is defined as a city, goes beyond my imagination, as it is situated right in the centre of the Northern part of the West Bank.

Nevertheless, every time I meet an Israeli who lives on the other side of the Green line, or a company that operates from there, I get a strong gut feeling of wrongness. I accept the complexity of the situation, and that there have been strategic security reasons for establishing some of the settlements, simply paving the way for the intentions in Resolution 242. I also know that many of these settlers will be allowed to stay after a final agreement, but my own conscience and morals would never allow myself to go and live on the other side of the Green line. Most likely not even work there. Settlement of the disputed territories is simply not something that I would like to be involved in, because every inch causes more tensions and aversion against the Israeli nation, in addition to slowing down the peace process. Fact remains that the Israelis have been able to "mark territories", while the Palestinians have not had the same opportunity. That is not fair game.

Then on the other hand, without any direct negotiations we will never get close to any final agreements, and Abu Mazen obviously has more important things on his mind that coming to the negotiation table, or to accept any offers from the Israelis. The Fatah-Hamas conflict, internal fractions in Gaza (in Swedish) and the threats from Iran and its new ally Turkey(!) complicates the question far beyond what the Israel-Palestine "experts" in far-away countries like Sweden can comprehend. Alas, no clear solution to the conflict this time either.

Happy Midsummer

The Swede and her wannabe Swede

Yesterday I celebrated my second Midsummer in Israel. Again we met a whole bunch of Swedes, half-Swedes and wannabe Swedes in Park HaYarkon in Tel Aviv. This year I had made a Midsummer crown for myself, however not with daisies and bellflowers, but rather olive branches and bougainvillaea. Anja and Johanna had made a beautiful smörgåstårta, and we had local varieties of prinskorvar and köttbullar, plus sill and potatoes. We enjoyed ourselves, ate and drank, and played kubb. Some people I have not seen in since last year, while others more frequently. Some from last year were missing, and instead there were a lot of new faces. It was a great afternoon!

The Smörgåstårta

I need a wedding dress!

My approaching wedding is not a big event, but I am starting to sweat a bit. I still have no wedding dress and it is only three weeks left. I do not want a classical wedding dress, but rather something casual and summery - but I want it long! All the way down to the ground! It neither have to be white. It can be some bright colour, or colours. I do not want it too sugar-sweet. Laces and pearls, frills and flounces make me feel very uncomfortable, if it is used in the wrong way. I fit better in some contemporary hippie/trashy/street-smart kind of thing. And it should not cost gizillions of money. Is that too much to ask?

True love has no boundaries

Daniel and Victoria

I am no royalist. But the magic we were about to see yesterday took me by surprise. It was two human beings, very much in love, who made their vows to one another, in front of the world. Victoria's dress was classy and clean cut, nothing garish about it. I felt that the whole arrangement were quite modest to be a royal wedding. Their genuine and sparkling love shone through over and over again, and my eyes were filled with tears more than once. Out of all the amazing speeches during the whole day, Daniel's speech (mostly in Swedish) to Victoria during the dinner was the most moving one. He spoke from the heart. I am happy for Victoria that at least the times are over when hierarchy and titles were more important than love, when it came to finding a spouse. Like Daniel said himself, Victoria kissed her frog, and he became a prince.

Moral conduct and removed privileges

It is popular to holler about the alleged immoral character of the Israeli Defence Forces. This is of course always done without any consideration to the fact that the IDF is involved in operations of war. In a war situation, tragical mistakes do happen, innocent people die and get injured. Sometimes even individual soldiers fail to follow the general moral codes and orders. We simply have a human factor involved.

However, when these mistakes are taken out of context it is easy to create an image of a systematic immoral conduct. Not only do you need to take a look at what routines there are on measurements taken after incidents like these, but also modus operandi of the opponent, and in what situations the soldiers find themselves.

About one and a half year after Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli soldier is now facing charges over the shooting of two Palestinian women. The soldier disregarded the IDF's rules of engagement and fired at a group of civilians that according to witnesses waived a white flag. This is the third indictment against soldiers who participated in the operation, where the two pervious ones were for theft and illegal use of credit cards, and overstepping authority.

Please show me one military force in this whole wide world that never has incidents like these. And please, put the IDF into comparison with Hamas, who oppresses, kills and tortures their own people, while celebrating every Israeli civilian victim they deliberately succeed to hit. And no, there are no extenuating circumstances just because they are the underdog.

To finish off with something completely different, I am happy to note that the Israeli Supreme Court is starting to clean up among the slackers and racists in the Haredi swamp. Mikael Tossavainen wrote nicely about this on his blog.

Feeding the "Ha! I told you so..."

I wonder why Uri Avnery (Translated artice in Dagens Nyheter) and Gideon Levy (Translated artice in Svenska Dagbladet) are the most hailed Israeli journalists in Sweden. Or, as a matter of fact I know why already. They say exactly what the Swede wants to hear.

- Israel is solely responsible for everything, while on the boats there were merely innocent peace activists. Hep!

- As soon as the siege over Gaza is lifted, the Mideast will turn into a Garden of Eden. Hep!

It does not matter how much I actually do agree with their factual criticism of the Israeli method of operating, but I still consider their biased approach a mock on the complexity of the Mideast situation. And as far as the Swedes are concerned, they search for information where they know that they will find what they want to hear. Unfortunately it will keep them from lifting their vision from the blame game. How can we use that constructively? We cannot.

I do not suggest that you avoid reading them. They do provide just criticism, but unless you find some appropriate complementation, you will find yourself intellectually malnutritioned.

Zeros by Four

"What'ya got there..?"

Last season we went to a beach just South from Haifa, where route 2 aligns very closely to the sea. It is a completely amazing place, with both the smoothest sand beach, and some rocky sections. At that time we could easily exit from the road, park on the shoulder and walk over a small ridge and then come straight down to a pretty much deserted beach. During the winter they have blocked that possibility with crash barriers along this stretch. Terribly disappointing.

Thus, this year we had to find a new place. We wanted to bring the dogs and therefore we do not want a too crowdy beach. Especially now when we also have Barak, who still needs to be a bit supervised in his socialising with other dogs. Yesterday and today we went to a place further South instead, just below Zikhron Ya'akov. It is a wide and clean sand beach, with less people than the official beaches, since it is slightly tricky to drive there. We arrived just after 9 and then there were not much people at all. We met a few other dogs, and we gave Barak the confidence to run around freely and most of the time it did turn out very well. Today there was a woman with two medium size mutts, a female and a male, and to begin with everything was fine. They I saw that this other male was getting tense, demonstrating his dominance with his tail straight up in the air and then I knew that I had to intervene. They ended up having a small fight, only for a few seconds, but nothing serious. A scratch on either dog and an owner who at first was hysterical over our "aggressive" German Shepherds, until we talked to her and explained to her that both dogs had been bit by the other one, and no one was more or less to blame than the other.

Other than that incident, Barak has been happier than ever. At home it is always Goshen who initiates play and nibbles Barak to get him going, but on the beach it is the other way around. I have never seen him play like he did now. It was also the first time that we really took him far out into the sea water. Goshen runs out with no hesitation, and she knows how to avoid swallowing the waves. This means that she can cross the area where the waves break, and come out and swim in the calmer water. Barak is still insecure about it, and although we carried him out a few times, he swam straight back in to land. I hope that he will grow fond of swimming like Goshen did. There is no better exercise also for dogs than swimming.

Around noon the "Zeros by Four" have awaken and start to arrive at the beach. These are the obnoxious and completely self-centred Israelis who drive all the way down to the water-line with their thirsty four-wheel drive SUV or jeep, pulling a water scooter on a trailer. If you before that had 50 m to the closest neighbour, you will now suddenly find yourself toe-flirting with water scooters, party tents, inflatable animals and screaming children chased around by neurotic mothers, and macho men beating the waves with their big and noisy toys. This is about when we have had enough of sun for one day anyway, fortunately, and we start heading home to eat lunch before too many of them arrive. On the way up to the car a group of people were on their way down to the water as they got stuck in the deep and loose sand - with a 4WD and a scooter dragging behind. We could not help shrugging in glee all the way home.

So, "Zeros by Four" was not about dogs. My dogs are more considerate than the real zeros...

Say cottage cheese

I am crazy about cottage cheese. In Sweden there is only one kind, and that contains 4% fat. Here our regular cottage is 5%, but you can also get 9% and 12%! Those are like eating a cheese dessert. The 5% one, I spoon on a daily basis, but sometimes we indulge ourselves with the creamier ones. When I go to Sweden I will by rennet so I can make my own cottage when I come back. Maybe even from goat milk.

Intellectual schizophrenia

My channel of communicating the Ship to Gaza incident has the last week more and more moved over to Facebook, instead of on this blog. It is easy to post relevant articles on your Facebook wall, and my posts there have provoked a lot of strong reactions and debates, some reasonable and inspiring, others less.

With the risk of appearing self-absorbed, I can tell you that most people that I meet, tend to find me pretty wise and sensible - as long as I still lived in Sweden, that is. Now when I report from Israel, the confidence in my judgement has apparently vanished in the haze of the Swedish Israel/Palestine discourse. By Swedish acquaintances, I have repeatedly been accused of bias, subjectivity and even of spreading Israeli propaganda and hate against Muslims!

On the other hand, I have Israeli friends who call me a hippie, for my leftist idealism and optimism. On Facebook I have except for my own blog posts, posted articles in English by people like Bernard-Henri Lévi and Carlo Strenger, as well as sayings in Swedish by Nima Dervish, Dilsa Demirbag-Steen and Sakine Madon. All these persons do direct criticism to where it is valid, no matter whether it is Israeli government, Swedish debate climate, EU, Hamas, IHH, BBP or the Iranian regime.

I cannot get this equation to sum up. I wish that people would rely a bit more to that first impression they had of me. I guess that too often there are forces that are stronger than common sense.

Maybe you noticed that my examples from Swedish media are not persons with typically Swedish names. Well, some of the best perspicaciousness has come from people who themselves, or their families, had to flee from oppressive regimes. Nima grew up under the mullah regime in Iran and both Dilsa and Sakine are first-hand witnesses to how the Turks treat the Kurds. They understand that the Mideast conflict is not merely about some occupied territories and a blockade, and they also realise that "Ship to Gaza" was not merely a peaceful humanitarian project. I do not really know what this says about some of the native Swedes, but I am getting close to a theory where centuries of peace has made people indifferent. When it is not about the Jews of course. Then the rules are different. Then both the musty conservatives and the angry left reveal that they have brown lice in their banners.

Diversity and boycotts

On Saturday we took a trip to Daliyat al-Karmel, to visit their colourful market that is open on Saturdays. We needed a finjan to make coffee in, and it was the first thing that we bought. During bargaining for the pot and some small cups, we were told that one of the guys in the stand was a Copt who had fled from Egypt. While Copts always have been persecuted and discriminated due to religious intolerance in the Egyptian society, sectarian violence against them have increased in recent years.

This inevitably brings me to think of the constant condemnations of discrimination and segregation in the Israeli society. The situation is far from perfect here, and Arab communities do deal with many problems, some of which have an explanation in the inhabitants own choices, while others are fair enough to blame on higher-level issues. Israel do have a government at the moment with some despicable and racist leaders, like the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and the interior minister Eli Yishai, who continuously makes statements that make you gasp for air. However, I do not find these individuals representative for the general attitude in Israeli population. Things must be put in perspective and even though this kind are alive and kickin', the situation for ethnic minorities, as well as people with other than conformal heterosexual preferences, Israel is like a "Gan Eden" compared to in the adjacent theocratic Islamist nations.

Today I made a hummus batch with a tahina made in Nablus. I do not boycott products from the Palestinian territories just because some people there want to execute terror attacks on Israelis. Boycott is one of the stupidest strategies to put pressure on any regime or organisation. Boycotting Israeli products is also laughable. First of all it would not be enough to stop buying Jaffa oranges, or even look for the Israeli bar code "729". You would also have to shut down your mobile phone and most likely your TV, as well as other high-tech equipment, since it contains Israeli-made components. But if you still would focus on fruits and vegetables, I want you to know that "729" also covers the territories, so boycotting Israeli agricultural products means that you boycott not only Arab farmers within the green line, but also Palestinian farmers in the territories, of which some co-operates with the large export companies in Israel. Clever?

Canine parenthesis

Just to break up all the seriousness about the "Ship to Gaza" incident, I have to give some credit to my dog Barak. He has been with us for 6 months now, and every day he challenges every rule and regulation. I have only met one dog that was as strong-headed as this one, and he was a German Shepherd/Alaskan Malamute/Arctic wolf mix! Barak is just not a dog for an amateur, since he is not very generous, in the speaking that he takes advantage of every loophole in your leadership. I consider myself pretty experienced with powerful dogs, but with Barak my patience is tested everyday and I fight to not turn frustrated, which is one of the largest loopholes you can present your dog with.

Nevertheless, the dog has undergone a remarkable change. When he arrived he had a bad habit of taking off on his own, partly due to a strong independence created by the lack of leadership in his previous owners. However, the trigger for taking off was his extreme fixation with chasing cats. As we began to realise that this was a big problem that needed some serious attention, we took the decision to work with the controversial e-collar to avert his behaviour. This turned out to be a success. We did not need to zap him many times before a "no" was enough to stop him from any cat temptation. The collar gave Barak freedom from the leash, and I can only praise the effectiveness, but I still stress the need of consultation of a professional if you are not experienced yourself. It is a powerful tool that can cause adverse behaviour and stress on the animal if misused.

We kept on having the collar on him, but almost never needed to use it. At some point it stopped functioning. It was brought from the US and to send it back would be an ordeal. A few weeks went and I suddenly started taking him out without it. My fear was that he immediately would acknowledge that it was not on him, but he was just as attentive as with the collar on. I started to take him on longer walks without it and all went well. Around the house he is completely desensitised from the temptations there and now I can do like I did with Goshen when I hang laundry, which is to just open the door and walk down below the house to hang it. Both dogs hang with me, sniff around a bit, but Barak has no desire to take off on any adventures. He charges after a cat once in a while, but if that happened six months ago, you could have expected to have to wait for an hour before he was back home. Now he comes straight back.

I believe that the mere presence of the collar changed his behaviour in a fundamental way over time. He is today happy and content with staying with the pack (since I am also the funniest person to be around ;). He is also enough exercised both physically and mentally to not have a need for going hunting for cats.

Today we took a walk down to Beit She'arim together, me, Yoram, the dogs and Gal on his bike. Yoram wanted to put the collar on, but I encouraged him not to. I have walked around the facilities when there were people there, with Barak healing unleashed by my side, with no e-collar. Today he behaved exemplarily and we even met cats on several occasions. Nowadays it is Goshen who is the instigator with the cats. Since she never does them any harm we never addressed is as a major problem, but now she is actually triggering Barak! Time to deal with the old bitch a bit I think. Barak is the hero of the house and since his nose for some peculiar reason smells of Rosemary instead of the regular odours, he gets a lot of kisses.

UN Council of Israel-bashing

The world is now beginning to realise that the activists on the Turkish boat Mavi Marmara is linked to the Islamist organisation IHH, and several of the killed activists have previously expressed a desire to become martyrs. Back in Istanbul, the "victory" is morbidly celebrated. Human lives were ruthlessly sacrificed to give Israel a huge PR blow. Still, the defenders of the flotilla refuse to acknowledge any responsibility on the behalf of the activists.

The United Nations Human Rights Council decided Wednesday to dispatch an international committee of inquiry to the region to look into the events of the Gaza flotilla. A total of 32 countries voted in favor of the committee of inquiry, nine abstained and three - the U.S., the Netherlands and Italy - voted against.

In this council, there is a majority of countries with ties to Arab nations. This makes it easy for them to create their own agenda in the voting procedures. Israel had been condemned 15 times in less than two years. By April 2007, the council had passed nine resolutions condemning Israel, the only country which it had specifically condemned. The council voted on 30 June 2006 to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. The resolution, which was sponsored by Organization of the Islamic Conference, passed by a vote of 29 to 12 with five abstentions. Toward Sudan, another country with human rights abuses as documented by the council's working groups, it has expressed "deep concern."

What is your bet on the next report? What fool is going to put his name on this one?

Obama has suggested that Israel probes the incident themselves (something they will do anyway), but under US supervision, although Netanyahu is delaying to come up with an answer due to internal disagreements in the government. To me, this seems like a more reliable solution than allowing the UN council to do it, a council that long ago diverted from the original dream of Eleanor Roosevelt, René Cassain and the other eminent figures that created the Commission of Human Rights at Lake Geneva some 60 years ago.

At the same time, Hamas is proving its dishonest intentions by blocking Israel from delivering the aids from the ships into Gaza. It surely makes me wonder how disastrous the situation in Gaza really is. On one hand, Hamas is known to confiscate aids for their own benefits and starve their own citizens, but then a Danish reporter presented an article (Danish) after visiting Gaza the other day, which shows that the problems look slightly different from what Palestinian media sources want to present. There are no real shortage of food and building material, but rather low employment rates, which prevent the citizens from buying the goods. This can can easily be explained by the agenda of the Hamas regime, who instead of focusing on building up the economy, direct all their resources on violent resistance against Israel. The blooming economy on the West Bank, where roadblocks and checkpoints continuously are removed should be proof enough.

To repeat myself, I am not defending the blockade. I find it non-effective on both preventing radicalisation and the continuous terror attacks, but the security question is real and valid and it needs to be taken into consideration. See what happened when Israel left Gaza the first time. Hamas is not any spring chicken. This Iran-backed theocracy butchers its own citizens if they open their mouths and confiscate humanitarian aids. What makes you think that they would stop if they had open borders?

This is the UN Human Rights Council