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| By Reuven Koret August 31, 2004 |
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Our Israel's Day feature is experimental. We welcome your feedback and story suggestions.
I was just about to write about the lastest fashion in suicide bomber lingerie -- explosive underwear ("is that a dynamite stick in your pants or are you just happy to see me?) when the "mivzak" -- the TV news bulletin -- wiped the smile clear off my face. In two staccato booms, Israel's amazing half-year winning streak came to a bloody end in Beersheva, our "queen of the Negev" and a place where, Ben Gurion University and Soroka press releases notwithstanding, nothing really ever happens.
The shattered bus, bloodied distraught passengers, graphic descriptions of flying body parts, parents looking for missing children, children being carried on stretchers, the Zaka saints cleaning up the scraps of flesh, and in the background the solemn intonation of the TV announcers and the updates from the hospital and the so-wise political and military commentators. All familiar, all routine, all over again.
So it was with me. Right away I turned into the once familiar "pigua" (attack) mode of journalism, updating the website with the perfunctory article of understated mayhem every few minutes as the death and injury toll climbed. Who took responsibility, what the government blah-blah said, the emergency cabinet meeting where nothing will really be blah-blah done. Alas, I wasn't the only one to want to get into Israel so I experience another unpleasant memory from the past: being overwhelmed by sudden web traffic.
I must admit that the usual pronouncements and condolences of the politicians rang even more hollow than usual. Sharon, intent on rewarding terrorism by driving Jews from their homes, gave his same old, same old. It was particularly galling since Sharon has been backtracking on his commitment to build the security fence in the southern sector, cowed (and I used the word advisedly) by the Hague harangue and our own self-flaggelating High Court jurists.
Meni Mazuz, the government's Attorney General, seems to be everywhere these days, warning Sharon not to fight back or be accused of war crimes, pushing for application of the Geneva convention to the territories and most recently calling for the police minister to be investigated for corruption... by the police. This should be fun. But it strikes me as boring ... and Israeli minister is accused of being corrupt! Dog bites man! Been there done that. That is how it feels to be in Israel today.
I was, at last reassured by the excellent work of the indefatigable Tom Gross, a journalist's journalist, who frequently puts together email that go way beyond the usual spam. We are proud to print his intro to an exceptional piece of investigative research by the EU, based on mostly Arab sources, of the extreme corruption in the Palestinian Authority, which pockets and misdirects the oodles of Euro that our civilized neighbors so profligately throw in their direction. And the ascerbic David Frankfurter weighs in with a parable to explain the gullibility and disingenuity of the European and Palestinians respectively, gullibility and disingenuity of the European and Palestinians respectively.
Anyway, their reports cheered me up and gave me the strength to put this edition to bed, before I ended a depressing day of déjà vu.
But if you really want to experience "déjà vu all over again" read David Wilder's extraordinary piece on Jewish appeasement in the Lodz ghetto and what it has to tell us today.
May the next day -- the first day of school here -- be a fresh start for all of us.
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