Friday, February 27, 2009

Twitter Too? No, Dorothy, Twitter Stays in the Basket.

"Twitter? What the hell is Twitter? I can barely keep up with email, Google chat, Facebook, my own blog site and answering my cell phone. I've even figured out how to reply to an SMS (Israeli text message)," I commented on a Friend's invitation to follow him on Twitter, which he posted on my Facebook Wall. "Oh wait," I quickly wrote in a second comment, "I forgot about You Tube, eBay and leaving feedback on Amazon for all my used book suppliers. There's also my Yahoo account and the two (or was it three?) groups I belong to there. I've accepted two invitations to join Linkedin despite the fact that I'm a disabled retiree with no hope of going back to work and no intention of trying to start my own business. And let's not forget about Kodak Gallery, Snapfish and Jeremy the Wedding Photographer's site. And now Twitter? What the hell is Twitter?"


"Best description: Twitter is the world in 140 characters or less. Fewer, actually," Les, a friend for years before he became my Friend, patiently explained. "I'll give it this," I shot back, "at 140 characters or less it matches most people's attention spans and may be good for those of us with burned out short term memory circuits. What were we talking about?"

Les makes his living on the internet so, for him, services like Twitter are a useful, practical, business tool. For me, its just another excuse not to finish the drafts of three blog posts that are becoming less timely with every passing login. Every writer has a process. Every writer has a ritual for walking away from the keyboard and clearing his or her head. A journalist I know cures his mid-week blues by breaking into my house and having too much fun going through my mail. This would be disturbing except his process enables me to live in Tel Aviv for four months. But my current blockage has gotten so bad that I'm reduced to ripping off my Facebook posts to create this blog post which will, in turn, be electronically sucked into my Facebook Notes and then Blogcast out into the ether. A week or two ago, I would not have had a clue what that last sentence meant or how to make it happen. This is scary. Like the time I realized that I knew more about IRAs than any normal human being needed to know. Its that kind of scary.

Please don't misunderstand. I find it charming that I can sit in the Middle East and communicate with an old friend who writes screenplays from his house with a view of the Hollywood sign in LA or a new friend who raises red earthworms on her farm near Gnaw Bone, Indiana. But I fear that my degree of digital distraction is getting out of hand. So, I'm going to pass up the opportunity to join Twitter, despite being certain that, any day now, there will be a Twitter which reveals, in 140 characters or less, G-d's plan for her creation, followed by a Twittered reply giving the day on which the market will hit the real bottom. Instead, I'll wait for Intel or the NSA to install the chip in my medulla oblongata through which I can not only speak to my friends but turn on the microwave, do my laundry, file my tax returns, adjust my pacemaker and jump at will between the so-called real world and virtual reality. While I'm waiting for the techies to show up, I'll finish the latest William Gibson novel. Or maybe I'll just post this blog and go to sleep. Its a plan.


Read more!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Cyberpunk Comes To Jaffa

Today was the sort of beautiful, sunny, warmish day that typically follows a couple of days of Tel Aviv winter rains. My intention was to finsh the three blog posts whose drafts are cluttering up my hard drive. But Liz was on the computer and the day looked great, so I took William Gibson's Spook Country off the shelf and headed out, south along the Tayelet, toward Jaffa. Gibson is generally credited with being one of the founders of a style known as cyberpunk or Techno Geek. His Neuromancer and similar works inspired virtual reality classics like The Matrix. Of course, when Gibson first began writing the internet was the province of PhDs and you had to know Geek Speakto make a computer do anything interesting. In other words, for most of us, Gibson's speculative fiction was just that. Today, your Mother has an iPod and a GPS. You can run down to Best Buy or go on eBay and buy any of the high tech toys his characters use. In fact, you probably already own most of them. This left Gibson with a problem similar to that faced by John LeCarre when the cold war ended. How do you keep your work cutting edge when the context for your fiction has just become yesterday's newspaper?

Fortunately for Gibson and LeCarre (and for those of us who like to sit in the sun and read their novels), there are always people of ill will getting away with bad deeds by using the most recently available tools. LeCarre shifted his focus to Russian mobsters and East African warlords and barely skipped a beat. Gibson has simply moved his artists, detectives, road warriors, spies and venture capitalists from the virtual world to the real world.

So there I sat on a bench, right on the border between one of the oldest cities on the planet and a city modern enough to make it into a William Gibson book, occasionally looking up from the book at the calm, aquamarine sea, eating my sambusak from Abulafia's (the great Arab bakery near the Jaffa Clock Tower and watching people go by. (If the young woman in the two piece jogging outfit is reading this -- thank you.)

Eventually I had to close Gibson, get into a cab and go get my ICD checked (my battery is fine, my A-Fib gurgles along as always). Tonight Liz, who is feeling better, decided to cook chicken fricassee, which was delicious as always. Tomorrow I'll take another run at the three blog posts I'm supposed to be working on. Or go sit by the beach and read. We'll see.
Read more!

Saturday, February 21, 2009

My Full Blog Profile

I wrote a new profile for this blog. Thanks to Liz and Janice, the new profile was cleaned up and OK'd for posting. But it turned out to be too long for the space provided by Blogger. So, I've decided to post the full version.

I am a retired attorney who spends his winters (December to March) in Israel. My wife of 35 years, Liz Lacher, and I rent an apartment in Tel Aviv and travel about from there. We've been doing this for four years and plan to keep coming as long as our health and our money hold out.

Liz and I search for places off the beaten tourist track and try as best we can to fall into life as locals. We hang out with friends and family at events like Army ceremonies, youth basketball games and piano recitals: take in the arts and music scenes; find volunteer work; and discover the best restaurants, cafes, and the occasional club (though we are way over the age limit for most of these). We are still searching for the best falafel and sabich stands in Israel.

I came of age in the 60's. In general, "the 60's" begin with the inauguration of JFK and end with the US retreat from Saigon. But musically, the 60's begin with the urban folk revival and Motown, in particular Stevie Wonder performing Fingertips at Murray the K's Big Holiday Revue (we were both 12 -- Stevie jump-started his career, I had an epiphany) and end with The Allman Brothers closing the Fillmore East in 1972.

Politics? Back in the USA I'm most comfortable with post-radical cynicism though you'll find me holding my nose and voting for the Democrats. (This year was an exception; I got to vote without holding my nose). If I made aliyah I'd probably vote for Meretz but not be unsympathetic to Hadash. I believe I'm a Labor Zionist but the species appears to be in danger of extinction.

Religion? Opiate of the masses and the root of all evil but whether or not G-d exists you'll find me davening in an egalitarian, Conservative minyan.

If you use the term "Jewish music" in my presence I think of George Gershwin; the great clarinet players Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Mickey Katz and Anat Cohen; HaDag Nahash, The Idan Reichal Project, Chava Alberstein and David Broza.

My world view is best defined by three films and a magazine - The Producers (the Zero Mostel original), Dr. Strangelove and Putney Swope. The magazine? Mad, of course.

Food? Never miss a meal. I come to Israel for the fresh and inexpensive fruits and vegetables, washed down by the boutique wines you can't easily get in the USA.

If you don't get the irony and other forms of humor that I try to inject into my posts, that's my fault. If, however, you don't think that governments, religions, businesses and their leaders should be mocked, you may want to find another blog to read.
Read more!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Pilpul - You Can't Make This Up

Tel Aviv

This is a collection of anecdotes that don't fit in any other blog posts but nevertheless appeal to my warped sense of irony. These are from reasonably reliable sources like The NY Times and Haaretz with my own editorial twists. Clearly this stuff cannot be made up and no amount of distortion or mischaracterization can make them more ridiculous.

During Operation Cast Lead a group of Sunni Muslims was holding the requisite anti-Israel, anti-USA and pro-Hamas rally in Baghdad. A Shiite homicide bomber walked into the crowd and set off his bomb belt killing a number of Muslim demonstrators. OK, let's have a chorus of "Which Side Are You On."


On two separate days, Hamas stole, at gunpoint, thousands of blankets and tons of food from a UNWRA warehouse and ten UN-marked tractor-trailor trucks. UNWRA, an organization funded with your tax dollars to help raise the next generation of Palestinian guerrilla fighters, took extreme umbrage and cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza. UNWRA demanded the immediate return of the stolen aid. A couple of days later, Hamas announced that they had made a mistake and returned the aid supplies. A mistake? And why is it OK for the UN to engage in group punishment for the sins of a particular group?

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, appeared in Shas advertisements offering G-d's blessing to anyone who votes for Shas. The Israeli Election Commission decided that this went too far, even for a country operating without a First Amendment Separation Clause. So Shas pulled the ads. The next day, Rabbi Yosef announced that a vote for Lieberman would be giving strength to Satan. No one suggested that he retract or at least stop. So, let's see. Under Israeli election law, you can't buy votes with blessings from G-d but you can call your main rival the devil. Take notes, this will be on the final.

And, last but not least, there was the joint list run by the Green Leaf and Holocaust Parties. Before you start trying to figure out why environmentalists and Holocaust survivors would band together, please take note the the Green Leaf Party advocates the legalization of marijuana. I just don't know what to say. But for more on Green Leaf, see my blog from March, 2007

Read more!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

And Now The Fun Begins

Election day ended with a thunder storm of Biblical proportions dumping rain, snow and numerous lightening bolts upon the country. Much of the weather here is of Biblical proportions. Not so the politicians or the elections.

Tzipi Livni has spent the past couple of weeks trying to re-make herself into Hillary Clinton. This result is good news and bad news. The good news is that her appeal to women and undecided young secular leftists seems to have worked. Kadima, which was polling at around 23 mandates appears to have won 28. A very nice last minute push that guarantees that Kadima, unlike its predecessor centrist parties, will be around for at least one more general election with Livni as Chair. The bad news is that, like Hillary Clinton, Livni finds herself in the position of having received the most votes but, given the rules of the game, will not become the next Prime Minister. Hillary at least got to be Secretary of State. Livni is on her way out as Foreign Minister. Some victory.

The right wing parties as a group won about 65 mandates. All Netanyahu has to do is persuade Avigdor Lieberman that a right wing "nationalist" coalition is Lieberman's true home (and buy off the religious parties with money for child support and yeshivas) and he will have a clear majority coalition. Livni has only the slimmest of hopes of forming a government. Why? Her victory came largely at the expense of Labor and Meretz who wound up with 13 and 3 mandates, respectively, a total of 6 fewer than predicted by the polls. This morning, Ehud Barak's party leaders seem to have won the argument that Labor needs to rebuild from the opposition. So Labor is not, today, looking to go into a coalition with Livni or anyone else. IMHO this changes once someone offers Barak the Defense Ministry. But even with Labor, Livni can't form a government without Lieberman and Shas, neither of whom were inclined to join her government four months ago and have even less reason to do so now.

The only ways Livni gets to be Prime Minister are long shots. First, Netanyahu suddenly becomes a patriot and decides that some sort of unity government is needed to address Iran and the recession. Likud, Kadima, Yisrael Beteinu and Labor have 84 mandates among them and could form a right-center-left secular coalition. Under this scenario either Livni is sole Prime Minister or she and Bibi agree to rotate in the office. (Something Shamir and Peres did in the 1980s.) Why a unity government? Two words: recession and Iran. Fixing Israel's share of the world economic crisis will require making some nasty decisions. Better to do that in a way that forces your rivals to share the blame with you. Shamir and Peres did this with some success in the 1980s. Iran (and Syria) have to be dealt with and that means keeping the Obama Administration (the Turks and Egypt) happy or at least not angry. It would also mean that Lieberman gets some satisfying pay back against Shas' religious leader for calling him Satan.

The second scenario is even more sketchy. Livni can be Prime Minister if Avigdor Lieberman, who wants to be Prime Minister following the election in 2013, decides that he's better off running against her than Bibi. Next, Livni swallows her principles and pays Shas its pound of flesh to join her government. Dangle the Defense Ministry and some cushy, no show jobs under Barak's nose and Labor will find a way to join a coalition with Lieberman and Shas. Then she will control 69 mandates and get to be Prime Minister. Do not hold your breath or take her in the office pool.

As for the former peace process, under anyone but Livni that's going to be DOA. Even a Livni-led government isn't going to be able to make much progress but it will at least try to make its dealings with the Palestinians look good enough for the US will help out with Iran and Syria. A Bibi-led government will probably not even bother with the show. Electing a right wing, religious government is the Israeli equivalent of Palestinians electing Hamas. You may not like them but you know where they stand. The smoke and mirrors Bibi will try to sell to George Mitchell is that focusing on economic development in the West Bank (and even Gaza if Hamas accepts a long term truce) will cause the Palestinians to give up violence and compromise on their national ambitions. Gee, an Israeli politician who thinks people can be bought. What a novel concept. So the Palestinians will gladly tone the missile and bombings down while they accumulate wealth, Bibi-style. They will then use the money to finance the Third Intifada.

But the most talked-about potential coalition, other than a right-only group, would be a unity government of Likud, Kadima and Yisrael Beteinu with Bibi as Prime Minister. Kadima would get the Foreign and Defense Ministries, which would go to Livni and Shaul Mofaz. The silver lining in this particular cloud is the religious parties get shut out and Lieberman gets to push conversion reform and civil marriage (two things near and dear to his Russian emigre constituency). Such a government might also be able to go after a deal with Syria (which would make the US, Turkey and Egypt happy campers but that's for another blog).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, the Eyptians have been trying to get Hamas to sign off on a long term truce by arguing that if Hamas doesn't take a deal before the Israeli government changes, they're going to get much worse offers. Hamas, which suffers from its own 3 or 4 way internal split, keeps saying "no deal" and opening the next box. The next box will have Bibi and Lieberman in it instead of Livni and Barak. Way to go geniuses.
Read more!

Friday, February 6, 2009

The Old Shell Game

I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for me to write something about the Israeli elections. Stam. So, with four days to go, the final polls having been released showing enough undecided/none of the above voters to cause an upset and because I'd hate to disappoint my fans, both of you, here's what things look like.

Bibi Netanyahu is most likely the next Prime Minister. The only serious debate is whether he will reach out to Labor and, maybe, Kadima to form a center-right unity government or simply put together a right wing coalition with the likes of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu and the religious parties. Lieberman's been gaining in all the polls at the expense of Bibi's Likud party. This has created an outside chance that Tzipi Livni will form the next government. You might recall that she failed to form a government last Fall (which is why Israel is having an election). For reasons I'll get to in a bit, she's even less likely to be able to form a government over the next couple of months. So, even if she wins, she loses and Bibi will get to be Prime Minister. However, if you like to root for upsets, then the sight of Livni in Tel Aviv clubs trying to convince voters (and herself) that she's changed (there's that word again) from a true daughter of the militant right to the Jewish Hillary Clinton, should keep you entertained. Hey, the Arizona Cardinals, a team that had no business being in the game at all, came within 36 seconds of winning the Super Bowl, so anything can happen.

The reason Bibi Netanyahu is most likely the next Prime Minister is because of the one sure thing that will happen next Tuesday. Israeli voters will continue to move to the right. The trend that began with the election of Ariel Sharon in 2001 will continue with a vengeance. The pollsters predict that the "right" will have anywhere from 64 to 68 mandates (a mandate being one of the 120 seats in the Knesset - don't ask) while the "left" will have the rest. But the election will not really be that close. First of all, the "left" gets 54 to 56 mandates only if you count Kadima as a left wing party and include the two Arab and one Arab-Jewish parties. Kadima, which consists mainly of people who followed Sharon out of Likud and a handful of conservative ex-Laborites, is only a left wing organization if you are Rush Limbaugh or a commentator on Fox News. The Arab parties have no chance of being asked to join a governing coalition. So, what remains of a left in Israel will actually have 20 to 25 mandates, depending again on whose poll you are reading. So Livni 's Kadima party may wind up with the most mandates but without right wing parties will not be able to form a coalition of 61 or more mandates. If the right wing parties refuse to join a Livni-led coalition, President Peres will have to ask Bibi to form a government. Even if Livni manages to form a government the coalition will have so many parties with such conflicting agendas that the conventional wisdom is that such a government will fall in less than a year. Which means I get to write to you about an election during nest year's trip to Israel. Are we having fun yet?

The lynch pin here is Lieberman. He's the guy running on the slogan "No citizenship without loyalty." Last week Liz and I went to an Election forum for Anglos. Danny Ayalon, a former ambassador to the US and now a candidate on the Yisrael Beteinu list, defended Lieberman's position saying it was not a racist attack on Arabs but merely an expression of the need for national unity. He points out that Lieberman is not proposing to expel Arabs or to put them in camps, a la the US imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WW II, only to somehow limit their citizenship rights, like being able to run for the Knesset. He said this with a straight face. Now I know what it must have been like to live in Europe during the rise of fascism or in the US under McCarthy. Even more depressing is the fact that Lieberman's is not the furthest right party with a chance to win mandates. What Ayalon didn't say is whether the same loyalty test would apply to Jewish MKs and Rabbis who urge soldiers to mutiny if ordered to remove settlers from the West Bank. Since Lieberman lives in a West Bank settlement I imagine that such activity is not going to be considered "disloyal." Lieberman's party is now generally expected to get close to if not more than 20 mandates, leaving Lieberman in a strong position to make or break the next coalition. Russians love Lieberman, himself a Russian emigre. Then again, Russians are also nostalgic for Stalin and the Czars.

So we enter the last few days of the campaign with Bibi making speeches about how a vote for Lieberman is really a vote for Livni but covers his right flank by declaiming that loyalty to the state is the responsibility of every citizen. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has challenged Lieberman's strong man status by reminding voters that Barak is the country's most decorated soldier and asking. "Who has Lieberman ever killed?" Livni, not one to miss a chance to pander, has also declared that every citizen should be required to serve in the military or perform national service (something that almost everyone has to do except the Arabs and the Haredim). But don't worry about our ultra-Orthodox brethren. Every election campaign includes a pledge from the center/left secular parties that this time they will repeal the Tal Law and make the Haredim do national service. Then they remember that they need Shas to form a coalition and that ends that. And, speaking of Shas, Lieberman is so scary that Ovadia Yosef, the party's spiritual leaders has been quoted as saying that no observant Jew can vote for Lieberman (while the Rabbi's daughter-in-law holds women-only election rallies where they chant "Yes We Can).

And, speaking of pandering, the real professional here may be Ehud Barak. Besides the entire Operation Cast Lead as the centerpiece of his election campaign, Barak reached out to settlers by making a deal to resolve the Migron case. Migron is a settlement of about 50 families that is built on what the Israel Supreme Court has ruled to be private Palestinian land. Barak, who, as Defense Minister, is in charge of civil administration in the occupied territories, promised, along with Prime Minister Olmert, to remove Migron and return the land to its rightful owners within eight months. That promise was made in January 2008. Migron is still there. Now it comes out that Barak and the settlers have agreed to the construction of a new neighborhood on the West Bank to which the Migron families will voluntarily move. The new neighborhood will be part of Adam, a settlement that already exists east of the separation fence. The new Adam neighborhood will have an initial tender to build 250 homes (plus schools, synagogues, commercial space, etc) as part of an overall plan to build about 1400 housing units. The first 50 homes, expected to be available in about three years, will go to residents of Migron. But, considering that Bibi and Lieberman will form the next government, if I lived in Migron the last thing I would be doing is packing my bags. The settlers were, of course, happy to agree to yet again expand the settlements. The entertaining but sad part of this tale will come when Bibi tries to convince George Mitchell that by not approving construction of the final 1000 housing units approved for Adam, Israel will have reduced its settlement activity. Oh well, at least Rahm Emanuel will some day be able to tell a funny story about how he got to teach President Obama how to say "bullshit" in Hebrew.
Read more!