Shabbat shalom!

This is the last shabbat before Rosh Hashana…

To pastafarianism!

Folks, here is the Flying Spaghetti Monster Conversion game!

Ha’aretz gives us an inside look at the tunnels and their diggers. It turns out these “entrepreneurs” can make $500,000 with one tunnel that survives a very short time. Also, those home owners – you know, the ones Rachel Corrie was protecting – can make as much as $30,000 for hosting a tunnel in their home.

It’s a good read.

Edit on June 26, 2006: I am adding the article itself because it has become impossible to locate it via the link and very challenging on Google.

Last update – 14:50 29/09/2005

The Burrowers

By Shlomi Eldar

A splendid Hamas-style beard conceals a very young, boyish face. Only the adult gaze seems to contradict the youthful features. Jaber is 18. His occupation: tunnel excavator. He didn’t understand that he was actually given the green light by his employers to tell “the Jew” about his singular profession. He was dumbstruck. The mature
gaze turned into a look of surprise. Secrecy is one of the most important terms of acceptance into a profession that only Rafah could have invented for the local unemployed. The economic ray of light in the city is literally at the end of the tunnel.

Sitting next to Jaber are two of his professional colleagues, Muans and Daud. Both of them, like Jaber, possess a skill which only very unusual or very desperate people are endowed with. All three have the ability to work for long hours underground: Like moles they carve their way relentlessly to the other side. All three prefer the dark of the tunnel to the light of Rafah, which has never done anything for them. With infinite patience, astonishing mental calm and the determination to push forward, they are not deterred by sand, the suffocating conditions or the lack of air.

How is it possible for someone to be “buried” 12 meters underground for hours at a stretch? They smile bashfully at the question and reply almost in a chorus. “It is nothing, it is not as terrible as it sounds. It’s cool down there. Even pleasant.” That’s right pleasant.

For years I have been trying to locate the tunnel diggers in Rafah and their employers, to interview them, but I never succeeded. Until now.

The Israel Defense Forces was ensconced on the so-called Philadelphi road between Gaza and Rafah and waged a losing battle against the most profitable business in the Gaza
Strip. The army built an ugly, rusty steel wall along the road, believing that by “burying” the wall’s foundations six meters underground they would create a tough barrier that the excavators would find difficult to breach. Above ground were five huge concrete bases and around them were tanks, armored vehicles and sophisticated observation and night-vision instruments. But below the diggers deepened the tunnel to 12 meters and rendered useless both the wall and the state-of-the-art defensive equipment above them.

The result was that the top of the steel wall remained suspended in the air, its legs buried six meters down, but not deep enough to stop the human moles, whose simple means made a mockery of the technology that was mustered to try to stop them. The Philadelphi wall remains one more ugly addition to the ugly landscape of Rafah, a wall that is of no use and that offers no deterrence.

Wall of silence
In a previous attempt to organize a meeting with the Rafah moles, “informed sources” said: “Are you crazy? Who will agree to put $150,000 at risk so that you can write an article?” Is that the cost of a tunnel, I asked. “No, it costs less to dig a tunnel today, a lot less, the price has gone down,” they explained.

It turns out that the IDF’s struggle against the diggers and against the owners of the tunnels was not totally in vain. It greatly reduced the technical level of the tunnels, and the cost of digging them declined accordingly. Unlike in the past, the tunnel owners, the “entrepreneurs,” understood that there is no chance of building a tunnel that will last for years, so they decided to go for an “instant” tunnel for one good arms-smuggling operation, or at most two, before it would be discovered.

When the IDF left the Gaza Strip this month, the fear of discovery did not vanish entirely, but the tension decreased tremendously. If in the past a reasonable suspicion about the existence of a tunnel led to the firing of a shell at it, now, with the Palestinian Authority in charge of one side of Philadelphi, such a suspicion will lead at most to a few days’ interrogation and detention. The risk justifies the huge price that is guaranteed to the tunnel artists.

My “contact,” whose identity I promised to keep secret, got me in contact with the diggers, on the condition that I would not photograph the faces of “the children” or
their present “place of work.” In the meeting they were mute and silent, incapable of opening up and revealing trade secrets. I suggested that we begin by touring the
smuggling route, in the hope that the wall of silence between us would be breached as the residents of Rafah breached the actual steel wall, which overnight became a
makeshift transit point between Sinai and Gaza. For a few days the smuggling route moved above ground, driving down the price of the smuggled goods by dozens of percent and
leaving the tunnel owners fearful of losing their highly lucrative source of livelihood.

“Don’t worry,” they told me, “the border will be closed again, the way it was. The owners of the tunnels will see to it that it does not become wide open.”

“If so, instead of an agreement with Egypt, Israel could have made an agreement with the owners of tunnels and appointed you people to guard the closed border,” I said, and they all laughed at the idea, which to them did not actually sound so far-fetched. Below the road are dozens of dormant tunnels, some of which were destroyed by the IDF but every tunnel can be restored, they say as experts. If the opening is destroyed, a new opening is dug from a different direction, the tunnel is accessed from the middle and so hundreds of meters are saved, after having been dug arduously in the course of months.

Nearly all the tunnels that the IDF destroyed are now undergoing a rehabilitation process. The diggers relate that the owners whose tunnels were discovered and destroyed want to save their enormous financial investment and are already looking for or have already found a new route that will connect them to the section of the tunnel that was not blocked.

“Look at this excavation,” Jaber says, pointing and guffawing. “This is what the Jews managed to do. There was a tunnel here  not serious.” By which he means that it was built by amateurs in a sensitive location, exactly beneath the guarded steel wall, was not deep enough and was discovered. An IDF bulldozer’s teeth exposed the winding tunnel and left a kind of curving, deep wadi in its place. The three showed me the now-closed opening, but I could not easily distinguish between a heap of earth and the opening of a tunnel in whose construction tens of thousands of dollars were invested.

How many tunnels are below us here?
Muans, laughing: “Ho a lot.”
How many? Twenty?
“More. Maybe a hundred all along the border, but not all of them are active, especially now after the price went down and the new situation with the Egyptians isn’t clear yet. Everyone is on hold, waiting to see how business will be renewed.”

The smuggling market
To own a tunnel in Rafah is a profitable business. The cost of building an average one, 800 meters long, from the nearby Brazil neighborhood or another one in the vicinity, is approximately $30,000. Another $30,000 has to be added to the cost for paying the owner of the house under which the tunnel is dug  a great deal of money in Gaza terms but a drop in the ocean compared to the profits a good tunnel can yield with Gaza’s craving for imported merchandise.

As in the stock market, as in any active capital market, here, too, there are ups and downs in the prices of the “goods.” When the market was dry and the smuggling route operated lethargically, the price of a Kalashnikov assault rifle soared to $600. In a routine, active market the price ranges between $250 and $300, a price that every
sensible person with an instinct for survival can afford in order to safeguard himself and his family.

When the border was breached and the smuggling proceeded freely, the price of a Kalashnikov plummeted to below $200 almost below cost price, according to the tunnel index. Smart “entrepreneurs” have stopped all subterranean activity until the market regains its balance and gets back to normal operations.

Supply and demand also affect the salary of the “moles.” In “good” periods a master excavator could make almost 50 Jordanian dinars (NIS 325) in a day. The first and second
assistants to the team head earn between 30 and 40 dinars, a huge salary in Rafah and Gaza terms.

An active tunnel can yield for the entrepreneur and his partners close to $500,000 in one smuggling operation. Just about everything is smuggled: weapons, ammunition,
explosive charges, hand grenades, drugs and other in-demand merchandise in the Gaza market which Egyptian merchants can offer in abundance. But not only merchandise has passed through the tunnels. People sought by the authorities in Egypt and there are no few of them who flee the wrath of the Mukhbarat, the Egyptian secret service  found “political asylum” in Gaza. For 20,000 dinars, the smuggling tunnel can become an escape route. The Rafah entrepreneurs will be pleased to offer a one-way ticket  without stewardesses, without meals and without passenger insurance for escapees from Egypt or for those wishing to return to Gaza but have been blocked by Israel.

Sami Abu Samahadana, from a famous family of wanted individuals, is one of those who took this route. Samahadana traveled to Egypt for treatment with the authorization of the Israeli government under then prime minister Ehud Barak. By the time the treatment was completed, elections had been held in Israel and the new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, refused to allow him to return. One night he entered a tunnel and the next morning he was home. Since then he has been wanted by the Israeli authorities.

Esprit de corps
We are touring the city of Rafah and the neighborhoods along the border. The diggers wanted to test me, to gauge my reliability before showing me the real thing. The “foreplay” lasts a few hours, during which I learn the secrets of the profession.

We sat on mattresses and pillows in a rented apartment in Rafah’s Brazil neighborhood and they made tea and coffee alternately. First the bitter black coffee sadah in their
argot is served; then extremely sweet tea to dissipate the bitterness; and finally the “real” coffee. As we take the tea and coffee together, after they are persuaded that I
have come solely for journalistic purposes and have not been sent by the yahud (Jews) to collect intelligence about them, they reveal another aspect of the trade secrets.

After a suitable house has been located under which a tunnel can be dug, the entrepreneur negotiates its purchase with the owner. The only condition for the deal to go through: Everyone in the family will continue to live in the house and go about their business routinely. Even the neighbors must not know. The smallest mistake and everyone is in danger. In the tunnel business, every mistake is fateful, every mistake puts life at risk.

Daud sipped his tea, lit a cigarette and continued: “The entrepreneur asks the owner how much the house costs. And he tells him, my house is worth 3,000 dinars. Ya’ani, he
exaggerated the price of the house, which is perforated from bullets that slammed into it all through the intifada. But the merchant does not argue. Take 10,000 in cash and another 10,000 when the work is done, he says, on condition that you all live in one room and don’t say a word about the work. The deal is closed with a handshake and in the hope that all of them will benefit from the transaction.”

“Partnership is also possible,” Jaber adds. “If there is a big house, in which all the unoccupied rooms can be filled with the sand instead of dealing with dangerous removal,
the owner haggles with the entrepreneur and demands part of the profits.”

Daud: “After the house is purchased, we wait two weeks to a month to see how the people behave. Only after that do we start to plan the work and bring in the tools, slowly,
without the neighbors seeing or knowing that anything is going on. We start the noisy work of digging a hole in the floor of the house. And from there we begin.”

How many people take part?
Daud: `It depends on the urgency and on the length of the tunnel. Usually six people work for half a year in two shifts. From 6 A.M. until 2 P.M., and then the second shift comes in.`

Two shifts, day after day, eight hours a shift, with two breaks to eat and rest. Like any organized workplace. They talked about their work as though they were digging in a coal mine. But here there is no organizing and there are no unions and there is no struggle for better conditions. This is a cohesive group filled with esprit de corps.

Teamwork is a necessary condition for success: There is no room for individualism or for idleness. Only thus is it possible to survive underground and even `to enjoy the work,` they say.

Jaber, Muans and Daud are an `A-team,` reading each other`s feelings with a wink of the eye or a movement of an eyebrow, understanding each other`s wishes. `When you dig there is no time and no place to quarrel,` they explain. `If someone is angry at someone, he has no place to go, he has to stay next to him with his back bent, so we prefer not to quarrel.`

The desert-type sand and the soft loess soil of Rafah are the `dream` of every excavator. The three have learned the features and advantages of the good earth. Daud usually takes the lead in the work. He is the chief digger, the team leader, equipped with a kind of small sickle that he made himself. His friends have heavier equipment shovels, a hoe and carts, which they pull by hand with the help of cables that are stretched along the entire length of the tunnel. Muans (or Jaber) fill the carts with sand that Daud provides in abundance and sends them back. The last person in the chain empties the sand into bags that will be emptied only when the area will be clear. `There
is a kind of electrical digging tool that revolves like a fan, but it is not convenient, it makes a lot of dust and sends sand flying, which makes it hard to work,` Daud says. In the tunnel business, too, it turns out, manual labor is more efficient than any modern instruments.

How high is a tunnel? Can you stand up in it?
Muans: `No way. A tunnel you can stand up in costs twice as much and is 20 times as dangerous for the workers. Do you know that one square meter of digging fills a whole
cart with sand? So why take chances? There is no reason.`

Daud: `A tunnel is no more than 80 centimeters high, and that is enough for us to crawl on our knees and work comfortably. When I want to rest, I dig a little space to the side, like a bed, rest, put one foot on the other, a quarter of an hour, half an hour, and even smoke a cigarette. When I finish resting, I get out of the bed, fold it up and go back to work.`

Muans and Jaber burst out laughing at these images, which are taken from life `on top` a bed and relaxing with one foot on the other.

You talk about this work like it is great fun.
Jaber, seriously: `Do you know how quiet it is there?`

Air supply
After 50 meters of digging, the work of navigation begins. Jaber shows me a telescopic pipe, which he calls a masura, which he uses as a periscope, like a submarine sending up an eye to look outside, to ascertain that the world up there still exists. `We have a compass, but I don`t rely on it. After 50 meters we always stop and start drilling a hole upward. The propeller tool is connected to the generator and starts to tunnel into the earth, like a drill. When it reaches the top I look out and see whether

I have not made a mistake in direction. Do you know what laughs we had? We have already tunnels in Rafah that were so amateurish that they almost went back to the starting
point.`

When he said `amateurish,` he filled his lungs to demonstrate his expertise in the profession he has acquired.

How long have you been in this profession?
Jaber: `Three years, almost. My brother, Ahmed, was also in this business, but now he has retired.`

Daud started as Ahmed`s assistant until, he says, he became a greater expert than his teacher. `Daud has a wonderful sense of smell,` his buddies said.

Sense of smell?
`Yes, because that is a very important sense for identifying dangers.`

A real professional is able to evade the dangers that a tunnel poses. The greatest danger is the presence of groundwater, which can flood the tunnel and bring about its collapse. The IDF caught on to this, apparently. `The Jews, the whores, would send water deep into the ground so we would be hurt.`

But the diggers learned how to cope with the danger of flooding, too. Daud`s famous `sense of smell` did not disappoint. `I can smell water from a long way,` he boasts. `I smell it through my fingers. When my fingers feel damp sand, I stop and think right away. My life and the life of my friends depend on it. Sometimes, when the water starts, I quickly spread a nylon sheet and attach a board to it, which closes all the openings. After that I dig in a different direction, to bypass the water obstacle. Sometimes I need to dig another hundred meters to get by the dampness, but that`s how it is, that`s
the cleverness.`

Two years ago, three diggers were killed in a tunnel that collapsed on them after it was flooded by groundwater. That `work accident` has had a major impact on Daud and his group, who understood that no one is immune and it could happen to them, too. `It took three days until their bodies were evacuated, for three days it was impossible to get them out because everything collapsed. We had to coordinate with the Jews to get them out even when we die, we need approval from the Jews to get out,` Daud laughs.

What about air, oxygen? Do you work with oxygen tanks?
`Are you kidding?` they reply together, as though I had insulted them, as though I saw them as amateurs who are unable to dig in a way that will allow air to enter the tunnel. `How can you work with that? You have to know how to behave there, below, to breathe regularly,` Jaber says. `There is plenty of air, you can breathe without any problem. We bring in a compressor that injects air all the time, so it`s just like being above ground, there is no difference. I told you we even smoke cigarettes.`

Work in progress
We went to see a new tunnel a work in progress. Daud, Jaber and Muans did not get authorization to show me one that was already being used for smuggling. `The owners
are afraid and we cannot put them at risk,` I was told by the `contact` who put me in touch with the three. `We have responsibility toward them and we gave them our word of
honor.` Still, when we passed by a certain house during the trip, Muans had us stop a ways off and said that there had been an active tunnel under that house.

`Do you know what went on there?` Jaber said. `The tunnel owner, the `entrepreneur,` would come in a Mercedes, park it by the side, go into the house and come out in an Isuzu van to scatter the sand. That is how he was discovered. Idiot.`

Indeed, disposing of the sacks of sand is the most sensitive task in the tunnel business. `You will not find even one empty sack in Rafah. Who is crazy enough to throw
a sack of sand into the sea in front of everyone with the zanana (aircraft piloted by remote control) in the sky or the street full of good people who want to inform on you
to the sulta (the Palestinian Authority)?`

So how do you get rid of the sand?
`It is all in Khan Yunis. All the sand of Rafah moved to Khan Yunis.` They are all amused by the joke.

But how do you get the sacks into the car?
`You take the car in, from the courtyard into the house, and you quietly load it and quietly head for Khan Yunis. You pour out the stuff and come back.`

By a rough estimate, a tunnel that is 80 centimeters wide, 80 centimeters high and 800 meters long will produce more than 750 tons of sand to be got rid of.

We stop near a house that was partially destroyed by a bulldozer. `When the Jews passed by here they damaged this house. But it`s nothing. People live here.` The trio led me into the house from the back, so the tenants would not see that a stranger was with them.

The excavation from this house is being made not from inside but from below, next to the foundations. A green tarpaulin has been put up to hide the work. We enter carefully, quietly. One by one. Next to the tarpaulin sacks of sand are waiting to be taken away. Dozens of white bags filled with Rafah sand, which have been removed from the bowels of the earth and will soon be on their way to neighboring Khan Yunis.

`Go in,` they urge me. `Go in, don`t be afraid.`

At the bottom of a two-meter pit I started to crawl into the tunnel, into the earth, flabbergasted at the thought that anyone could call this a pleasant place. I remembered
the film `Being John Malkovich` the people who had to work in an office that was only half a floor high, walking bent over and feeling suffocated, so you wanted to stretch as
soon as you came out of the movie.

My escorts saw the look of fear on my face and started to tease the cowardly Jew. `Go on in, we are here,` Jaber said loudly, to infuse me with confidence that, should anything happen, I was with people who were experts in rescue. Everything was dark. Pitch black. No one had bothered to bring lighting equipment, and the generator was not working either, for this coerced and unplanned visit.

Since the upheaval in local life the Israelis leaving the Philadelphi road and being replaced by the Egyptians tunneling has stopped for a time, as everyone waits to see
which way the wind is blowing.`

The Egyptians don`t kid around,` Jaber says. `There, on the other side, if they find a house where a tunnel has been dug, it is the death penalty for everyone. There are no games. With them the law is the law and punishment is punishment. So we do not go into the houses with the tunnels there, no family will agree to that. We leave via orchards and groves, which are camouflaged well. There is a liaison man there who gets $1,000 just to guard the opening and to open and close it when needed. That is his work.`

I sat at the opening of the tunnel, barely able to breathe, whether due to fear or because I am not suited to the tunnel-digging trade. I had gone down barely two meters and still had 10 to go to reach the bottom. Imagine a four-story building, but all of it underground.

With gestures Jaber explained the structure of the excavation a half-crescent that reaches a low point and then starts to rise into the Egyptian section of Rafah. Eight hundred meters, sometimes less, with each meter calculated like a complex engineering project

How is the cooperation on the other side arranged?
Jaber: `We have guys there who wait for us to get below them and then guide us there so that we will get to the finishing point.`
By telephone?
`Yes, by telephone.`
`And do you know what?` Muans adds. `Now that so many people moved from here to there, a lot of people bought houses in good places and they are waiting for us to get to them there to dig tunnels from their houses. They think they will make a little money from the new situation.`
Does the PA fight against the tunnels?
Jaber`s breath could be heard, before he replied. A kind of sigh of relief at the new situation, though the words he spoke were apparently intended for Israeli ears. `They
are working seriously, Preventive Security. They have a unit with the mission of locating and destroying tunnels. They are more serious now than ever, they want to prove
that they are in control of the situation.`

In the same breath he describes how Preventive Security itself purchased hundreds of rifles as well as ammunition that were smuggled into Gaza through tunnels. `Preventive
Security has no weapons. They are still using the old weapons and they had no way of buying something new at reasonable prices. You could say that the fact that the IDF left saved them when it comes to weapons. That was the opportunity they were waiting for.`

My `contact` also took advantage of the anarchy at the breached border immediately after the IDF pullout: He bought 50 hand grenades for $250 each, he said, `because here in Gaza no one knows what tomorrow will bring.`

The `contact`
We emerged from the uncompleted tunnel and went back to the apartment for more tea and coffee. The `contact` asked what I intended to write. I replied that I would write what they had told me, no more and no less. `Just don`t make problems for us with the sulta,` he warned. `Write that they are doing a great job, that they are working energetically to prevent the excavations.`

My 12 hour layover in Amsterdam also included a trip to the much less introspective Rijksmuesum (which sounds a little too close to a Reich’s Museum, and makes one wonder which Reich that would be). Even though 90% of the enormous museum was closed for renovations (which they don’t tell you until after you pay), what they still had open was massively impressive.

Among the awesomeness was Rembrandt’s “The Loving Couple” more commonly known as “The Jewish Bride”, the painting you see behind me (now class, notice her hand accepting his touch on her Jewish boobie”), a long standing favorite piece of mine from that era.

Other interesting aspects of my trip included sitting next to a nice man from Afghanistan on the plane to Amsterdam, a proposal to bear the children of a man from Tunisia who owns a fruit stand and talking to a young man from Switzerland on the second leg of the journey. He told me how it is still taboo in Switzerland for him to even mention that he is Jewish, and I realized how fully American my Jewish experience really has been.

This, of course, was after having to be at the gate D3 two hours before the KLM flight to Tel Aviv departed. Why so early? I’m glad you asked. Because for Tel Aviv flights only, not for any flights to Kabul or Tehran, each passenger goes through a second wave of EL AL-style security, on top of the security everyone in the airport already went through. Because it’s an understood fact in the world that Jews are a target. And this is from the Dutch, where the Hague is, as if the message was “if you want to blow up Jews, that’s your own business, but don’t do it on one of our planes”.

In any case, after way too many hours of travel time, and a dozen more stories, I finally crawled into my own bed in Jerusalem at 4am, thinking what an amazing thing that was to have; a little space in the land of Israel that I could come home to.

When I read The Diary of Anne Frank as a little girl I was quite captivated by the tale, and it spawned an era in my youth where I devoured other such stories of these ultimate games of hide and seek. Born exactly 53 years and one day before myself, this dorky little Jewish girl had been the face and name through which I had imagined myself in that era, she had been the catalyst for way too much reading on the holocaust than is healthy for a child and countless sleepless nights of my pre-adolescence where I imagined what if.

Three generations removed from the Holocaust, it gave me a connection, at a safe distance, to a Jewishness not based on much other than an ill defined condition of specialness (why were we special? I didn’t know, but it definitely had something to do with the holocaust). I have since become somewhat resentful of my death-centric Jewish identity and let it go, along with other faded remnants of my childhood. Enforced by my move to Israel, where I was able to form an identity based on strength rather than weakness, rare are the moments I allow myself to connect to the incomprehensible realities of what happened to our people 60 odd years ago.

Even so, On my journey back to Israel two days ago, I had a 12 hour lay over in a cold and rainyAmsterdam, and felt compelled to visit the Anne Frank House.

I went through the house twice. Not quite knowing how to feel, I was somewhat disappointed that I didn’t feel more. Did I not dwell long enough in each room? Did I not contemplate the overall significance enough?

But then what is our duty as living Jews? Yes, we must remember, but must we still mourn? I think in my own life I had to make a break from the emotional quicksand of the holocaust in order to move forward as a member of a living and thriving Jewish people. As such, I could not help but appreciate the beautiful irony that in a city where Jews once wore stars declaring them Jude, I walked on the same streets proudly sporting a hat declaring me Jewlicious. Cheesy as it often is, I couldn’t help but silently sing a little Am Yisrael Chai.

More on the trip when I get back from the shuk…and looking for a home for Michael and ck.

But it seems Israeli customer support has become twice as useless too

The results of a new poll released by Tel Aviv University’s Netvision Institute for Internet Research show that high speed internet access has doubled in Israel in the last 2 years. Apparently 54% of Israeli homes are now connected to the Internet via high-speed ADSL or cable connections. However, it seems that the exploding demand has taken customer support departments at Israeli Internet Service Providers by surprise because support sucks hard. A recent study commissioned by Jewlicious demonstrates that trying to get help from a certain Cable Internet provider who shall remain nameless (HOT – not!) sucks harder than a $5 Tijuana whore (or so Michael tells me). And they wonder why so many Israelis are leaving the country! So much for the Zionist dream …

** Click here for the most up to date information on your free trip to Israel with Jewlicious **

Are you planning on going to Israel for free with Jewlicious during Summer 2006 or beyond? Please click here and look at the most recent posts for the latest information on your free Israel trip with Jewlicious and Oranim! Older posts contain information that is outdated.

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Register Already!
Yes, there are still spaces available if you want to go to Israel this winter for free with taglit-birthright israel, IsraelExperts and Jewlicious. If you are Jewish, between the ages of 18-26 and have never been to Israel on a peer based trip, you can join us this winter for what’s shaping up to be a great trip!

Laya and ck will be your madrichim on a program designed by the good folks at IsraelExperts and some input from Jewlicious. Last summer, on top of travelling the width and breadth of the country, we had an excellent shabbat experience in the old city of Jerusalem, went to a hip hop night organized by mobius and his friends at the corner prophets and had a traditional morrocan dinner at a moshav. This coming trip is going to be even better – stay tuned for more details!

But seriously, get on the ball. If you can go, then register without delay. If you can’t go but know someone who can, let them know! And if you have already registered, let them know that you want to go to Israel for free on the Jewlicious trip. If you have any questions, let us know (you can send email to jewlicious [at] gmail.com.

This is seriously your last chance to go to Israel with Jewlicious this winter. Register now!

UPDATE: The Discover Israel/Jewlicious trip has a pending departure date – Jan. 1st from New York. Try to avoid showing up hung over!

Chutzpah sometimes asks ‘why do men go for younger women?’ The answer that probably leaps to mind is something like ‘they are firmer, less bitter and more fun!’ However, Muffti has dug deeper and found the true answer, at least as far as the Jews go. We aren’t a shallow bunch of men looking for the newly ripened fruit. We just die quicker.

According to the Israeli Bureau of Stats, life expectancy was 77.6 years for Israeli men in 2003 (the latest available figure) and 81.8 for women. For those of you who find counting a challenge, that is 4.2 years difference. One might think that this would encourage men to look for women who are about 4 years older than them, thus accounting for the time difference in life expectancy. But not so! Since we die younger, we want to spend our lives living like we know we’ll die young. And we can ‘t live young with someone who can take it easy since she’ll live well past her late 70s and is thus relaxed with plenty of time to do all the things she wants to do.

World wide, the average life expectancy is roughly 61 years for men and for women, yep, 65. In Roman times, life expectancy was 22-25 years, so things seem to have gotten a fair bit better. Here is a handy chart reporting on the 2000 stats for life expectancy. You’ll all be glad to know that Muffti took the test which confirms that so long as he doesn’t hang out with CK too often, his life expectancy is around 83 years. The test, however, didn’t contain any question of the form ‘Are you a Grand Muffti?’, which surely makes an positive contribution.

See Globes Online for details.

No Direction Home. It was a weird film with fascinating footage of Dylan very early in his career. However, in some ways it was very unsatisfying and provided little insight into the man, his “process,” or his work. The film does open a small window into the early to mid-Sixties and the social changes that were beginning to take hold of American society.

Dylan, it seems, while being right in the thick of popular musicians who were defining the era, did not really want to play a role in the public sphere. He wanted to write his music, his lyrics and have an audience with which to share them.

The film captures an ambitious young man who is curious about music, who seeks to go out and learn as much as he can and then apply it to his own work. He goes through a process of discovering his own voice as a poet and musician, and then without doing anything that would be considered self-promoting, he proceeds to become very popular and his folk songs acquire a patina of mystical truth that people might grant to the words of a prophet.

Dylan doesn’t seem to care. He appreciates the larger audiences, but he simply moves on musically and thematically. When his fans protest, he is insulted but moves ahead with his ideas anyway. Ultimately, he becomes tired to the point of disgust with others’ definition of him, and the relentless expectations of the media, the fans and the general public. The movie ends with his playing Like a Rolling Stone one final time, but he tells his band to play it “fucking loud” and it’s as if he is shouting at the audience (a member of which calls him “Judas” when he steps on stage because he rarely sings folk or protest songs by that point in his career) to just shut up and listen: he is no prophet, he is a singer and songwriter who simply wants them to listen.

I was struck by his intelligence, but also by the sense that he wasn’t really in tune with other people. He didn’t seem to be very sensitive to those who surrounded him or to care much about them. He was driven by his art. He is funny in the clips as a young man. I mean that he has a sharp wit and a quirky, cynical sense of humor that flashes quickly when an opportunity presents itself. He seems to be disenchanted with the role society thrust upon him, and a little tired – both in the clips as a young man and in the recent interview that pulls the film together. He’s never truly happy or at ease. He’s always under the gaze of fans or a camera as his popularity soars. He has to do press conference after press conference to promote a tour, but he mocks the press and jabs at them instead of responding to even a single question.

The issue of religion or spirituality doesn’t touch the film at all. It’s a pragmatic movie that simply shows a musician who is very talented as he begins his career and takes it to a point where he is one of the most well-known musical performers and songwriters of his generation. It left me a little empty and seeking to learn much more. But I don’t think he’s an enigma on purpose, I think he recognizes that being a popular performer might make others seek to learn and dote on his opinions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that his opinions have any significant value. So he doesn’t really open up. The music, he thinks, should speak for itself.

If you’ll recall, back in the distant mists of early 2001, a certain unpopular dictatorial Muslim regime decided to destroy some historical antiquities that it found inconvenient to its own political and religious position. That destruction raised an epic cry of protest from all over the world, made the front pages of countless newspapers, and was a closely-followed story all the way up until the antiquities’ destruction.

Of course, I’m talking about the Taliban’s decision to destroy the massive Buddhas of Bamiyan, which catapulted the formerly little-known group of Islamic thugs to worldwide prominence. UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), in charge of a list of World Heritage Sites, and dozens of world governments, even Islamic theocracy Iran, protested mightily. The Japanese government offered the Taliban a huge sum to save the statues. But of course, the Taliban destroyed them anyway.

Meanwhile, two years before the world outcry over the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, a certain Muslim religious organization was carrying out a massive act of willful destruction of antiquities that it found inconvenient to its own invented history.

I’m talking about the Waqf’s construction beneath the Temple Mount, which required the removal and unceremonious disposal in garbage dumps of tons and tons of rubble which contained, among other things, ruins from both the first and second Temples. The Waqf purportedly was interested in building a mosque, although given the PA’s (and Islam’s) official policy of denying the existence of a historical Jewish presence in Israel (because after all the Israelites were Muslims) and particularly on the Temple Mount, their intent may have been more sinister. A PA press release from 1997 claimed “The archaeology of Jerusalem is diverse – excavations in the Old City and the areas surrounding it revealed Umayyad Islamic palaces, Roman ruins, Armenian ruins and others, but nothing Jewish. Outside of what is mentioned written in the Old and New Testaments, there is no tangible evidence of any Jewish traces or remains in the old city of Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity.” And straight from the mouth of PA President Mahmoud Abbas: “[Israelis] claim that 2000 years ago they had a Temple [on the Temple Mount]. I challenge the claim that this is so. But even if it is so, we do not accept [current Israeli claims on the Temple Mount].” Abbas is also noteworthy for challenging other commonly accepted historical facts such as the Holocaust.

In any case, nobody cared when the Waqf started dumping the remains of the Temples. UNESCO was more concerned with Muslim claims that Israelis were not providing appropriate protection to Islamic antiquities unearthed by excavations (which itself may be a problem but is certainly nothing compared to willful destruction). The UNESCO agent assigned to inspect Israel’s complaint that the Waqf was destroying Temple Mount antiquities decided that the only damage on the Temple Mount was caused by neglect due to concerns over sovereignty, and not any intentional destruction.

Curiously, the Israeli Antiquities Authority gave the mounds of rubble a cursory inspection and declared they were of no archaeological worth. However, it may be that the Antiquities Authority needs better archaeologists, because an archaeologist from Bar-Ilan University working independently of the Authority to sift through the rubble has discovered a 2600-year old seal from the First Temple Period, the first find of its kind from that era. In addition, the archaeologist, Dr. Gavriel Barkay, has discovered coins, pottery and various architectural odds and ends from the First Temple Period all the way down to the late Islamic period.

One would think, especially now that solid evidence of the Waqf removing historically significant material exists, the world who raised such protest when two Buddha statues were destroyed might raise at least a whimper in defense of the historical merit of the Temple Mount, the center of the Israelite religion which gave modern Western civilization its moral code. Instead the only protestors are Israeli archaeologists and religious Jews.

Apparently dynamiting Buddha statues is a grave crime against humanity, but bulldozing and dumping the remains of two Jewish Temples of huge historic import is, well, not so objectionable. Hmm.

With religious extremism and intra-movement dissent taking all the fun out of fundamentalism, isn’t it about time we had a parody religion, maybe focusing on a benevolent deity made of complex carbohydrates?

Enter Bobby Henderson, a 25-year-old with a physics degree from Oregon State University. According to a recent article in the New York Times, Henderson claims that he was visited in a dream by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an airborne tangle of spaghetti and meatballs with two eyes. Prayers to the FSM, obviously, end not in “amen,” but in “ramen.”

[Cue Dr. Atkins spinning in his grave.]

But Henderson’s not just poking fun at religion in general. He’s reacting to a recent decision by the Kansas School Board’–and an approach endorsed by Our Valiant Leader George Bush and Senator Bill “I Heart God” Frist– to allow teachers to teach theories of Intelligent Design in schools.

Not being intelligent nor a designer nor in school myself, I had to go to the internet to figure out what that means, exactly:

According to Wikipedia, Intelligent Design (or ID, as it’s known) “is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Though publicly most ID advocates state that their focus is on detecting evidence of design in nature, without regard to who or what the designer might be, in statements to their constituents and supporters nearly all state explicitly that they believe the designer to be the Christian God.” Furthermore, “is not recognized as a scientific theory and has been categorized by the mainstream scientific community as creationist pseudoscience. ” (Ah. Pseudoscience. Just like Tom Cruise predicted about psychiatry…)

Anyway, Henderson is trying to make a point: that it’s absurd to teach intelligent design as science. On Henderson’s site, he posts some of the tenets and beliefs of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, including the fact that “it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia.” (See site for a hilarious graph that points out the decrease in number of pirates over the years…)

Now, Mr. Henderson says on his Web site, “over 10 million people have been touched by His Noodly Appendage.” The article also refers to the resultant FSM religion as–wait for it–Pastafarianism.

Ninety-five percent of those who wrote to him, he said on his Web site, were “in favor of teaching Flying Spaghetti Monsterism in schools.” Five percent suggested that he would be going to hell.

[Which is, of course, a sure sign that you've tapped into something important.]

The Church has garnered quite a following, the article reports: two dozen academics have endorsed the pasta god and three members of the Kansas board who already opposed teaching intelligent design “wrote kind letters to Mr. Henderson.”

But don’t worry…even fake, intelligently constructed and randomly detailed parodies of religions have rival factions and dissent among the ranks:

A rival faction, based on SPAM (Spaghetti & Pulsar Activating Meatballs), has formed. And there’s bickering, Mr. Henderson said in an e-mail message, about whether the god is made of spaghetti or linguini. Those people, he noted, “give me a headache.”

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 7: He’s got a book deal!

(Via JenTheChaosQueen)

Her worth is far beyond that of rubies

From Gawker, reported with great embarassment:

———-

There was a party last week for Dr. Pat Wexler, dermatologist to the rich and famous, and from it WWD’s Jacob Bernstein reports perhaps the most perfect quote ever uttered by a PR maven:

“She does my fat injections,” offered Peggy Siegal, who stopped by in between screenings she was hosting of the new film “Capote.” “She takes the fat out of my ass and puts it in my face, so when you’re kissing my face, you’re kissing my ass.”

And we always thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

———-

Oy. How classy. Even by New York PR standards.

One more day left!
That’s right, only one more day left to send us your most Jewlicious pic (defined as liberally as possible) and perhaps win an Everything Is Illuminated prize pack which includes contains one copy of the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, one CD of the official film soundtrack, a movie t-shirt and a neat-o travel pouch! One More Day! Send us your pics! We’ve gotten a number of really neat ones already, but we kinda feel you all are holding out on us. So give it up already. Send your Jewlicious photos to jewlicious@gmail.com. Go ahead… make our day.

You might recall that we mentioned Israel’s offer to send emergency aid personnel to help in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Well, the US rebuffed Israel’s kind offer, but Jews… you know how pushy they get! Turns out an Israeli NGO called IsraAID managed to sneak in an 18-member team of physicians, mental health professionals, trauma specialists, logistics experts and a special unit of Israeli police divers.

“We had tools like Jack the Ripper,” said Gal Lusky, a diver who founded Israeli Flying Aid, a non-governmental organization that undertook the mission along with the IsraAID relief group. “We had plenty of stuff and we had to justify it at immigration. When we were asked what is all that equipment, we said we were going to the Jewish community to teach youth groups how to prepare summer camps.”

You can read more about this remarkable story at the JTA. Or maybe you want to read about how the United Jewish Communities Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund has raised $14 million so far (with $1 million to help evacuees in Houston), or read about the Chabad Telethon for the hurricane victims, or… or we could all just return to our usual self-righteous, condescending and alienating programming, brought to you by a cacophany cacophony of self-aggrandizing self-important jerks in our own insular world. Heh.

The city of Burlingame, CA, previously famous as the site of a PEZ museum, recently spent $1,600 in order to obscure some shapes on a recently renovated playground. Why? Well because some guy complained that they looked like stars of David and that having little kids walk on them was disrespectful. I figure that Randy Schwartz, director of parks and recreation, who announced the alteration maybe should have known better. I’m also kind of stunned by one annoyed parent’s complaint (the playground was closed for a day), to wit:

“I can’t believe it,” said a Burlingame resident who wanted to remain anonymous. “The kids would not even know what (the Star of David) means.”

Uh… ok. Whatever. Yes, the star of David is currently understood to represent Judaism and Israel but it has zero religious significance, and as Wikipedia is quick to note “The shield of David is not mentioned in rabbinic literature. Notably, not a single archeological proof exists as yet concerning the use of this symbol in the Holy Land in ancient times, even after King David.” So should I be all “Hurray! Thanks for respecting our religion!” or should the proper response be “Yow. Chill. It’s just a playground.” I have no idea, so instead of discussing this really pressing issue further, please allow me share with you this totally gratuitous photo of Israeli soldier women out of uniform…

Bahrain, anxious to join the WTO and under pressure from the US dropped out of the general boycott on Israeli goods It wasn’t much of a sacrifice since Bahrain is a rather small (680,000) nation. Furthermore, by the lights of economists (such as Doron Peskin), the ‘ban’ is a bit of a farce:

Israeli goods are entering the Persian Gulf in any case, and the boycott is not being applied if there is no “Made in Israel” tag on the goods…The authorities there are well aware of this, but they prefer to turn a blind eye.

Maybe we should tag our products ‘Made in the Homeland of Your Zionist Enemy Using The Blood Of Your Babies’ and see if they slip through the net.

Economics is one thing, however, and symbolism another. The move was immediately criticized by (aptly named) the Society for Resisting Normalization with the Zionist Enemy. But with a name like that, good luck! In any case, the trend as far as boycotts go look to be in the direction of ‘normalization’. While the Saudis steadfastly refuse to drop the ban. United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are both pondering the consequences of dropping the ban. Muffti is happy for that; though he supposes in the end that it’s a bit sad that it’s alway about the benjamins.

Hat tip to Kenny. Source: Globes.

Man Sues Online Dating Service After Being Rejected

POSTED: 9:59 am PDT September 20, 2005

LOS ANGELES — A man is suing an online dating service after being shunned by another subscriber, according to court papers.

Soheil Davood claims his paid subscription to JDate.com, billed as “the world’s largest Jewish singles community,” guaranteed that he would find “high-quality, successful Jewish personals without wasting precious time.”

According to the suit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the plaintiff used the service on Aug. 28, and around 10:30 p.m. began an “online dialogue” with a subscriber using the user name SuperFriendlyGal.

The subscriber allegedly described herself as “a 34-year old Ashkenazi Jewish female, who was never married and who resided in Westwood, California.”

The subscriber, who is a co-defendant in the case, made sexual remarks during the chat, claimed to work for the nation’s largest lingerie manufacturer, and told Davood that “she might have found her man in the plaintiff,” the suit states.

Davood claims the subscriber wanted to talk to him and even convinced him to call directly when he became tired and wanted to go to sleep.

When the plaintiff called, he “received a taunting automated message telling him that he was rejected.”

Davood, who is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, claims the Web site is “defective” because it was poorly designed and monitored, which exposed him to “serious psychological injury.”

A representative for Spark Networks, which operates and manages JDate.com, said she could not immediately comment on the lawsuit.

I have nothing to add to that story.

We are calling our militant group to stop their activities against the Israeli occupation outside Gaza strip

Sweet words to Muffti’s ears! After a few days of pounding sites in Gaza and arresting militants in West Bank, Hamas Gaza leader Mahmoud al-Zahar issued the above statement. The IDF, however, kept up the attack for hours after the proposed cease fire, anxious to take out weaponry manufacturing infrastructure.

The IDF also fired rockets on a vehicle, killing Mohammed Khalil, an Islamic Jihad field commander. This led to a statement by Islamic Jihad that they would cease cease-firing. Spokesman Al-Hindi said:

There is no talk of a truce, there is only room for talk of war…(Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon ended the truce when he started this widescale war against the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,

Oh well. Open one door, slam another Muffti guesses. The IDF tried to kill Khalil on three separate occassions.

Don’t think, however, that Hammas isn’t still angry about the missiles that exploded during a weapons parade. They just decided to project their anger on a slightly more manageable target, Palestinian Authority Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa. Khoussa was a member of the PA who called Hamas dirty liars disagreed with Hamas’ version of the event: that Israeli’s caused the explosion. Gunmen opened fire on his house earlier today. While Hamas hasn’t taken responsibility, Abu Khoussa was fairly clear about who was to blame:

You can ask those who are spreading rumors of treason…

Hamas declined to comment.

So to recap: Hamas is cool with Israel for now, but Islamic Jihad, who were cool with Israel, now aren’t. The PA, who were all happy to let insurgent group retain their arms, are now under fire by members of those groups. Confused? Don’t be. It’s the Middle East.

See CNN and the Israeli media for more details.

(Sorry! Muffti hadn’t seen that Michael beat him to the punch. Oh well. Muffti’s has a cool pic…)

Dark stains spread across the festive green trousers of hundreds of brave Palestinian martyrs teenage boys with big mouths and small…Kalashnikovs…as an annoyed Israel began to rain death from above in Gaza. Capping off a great few days for Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups, which started with that little, uh, munitional mishap, Israel arrested 260 Palestinians in the West Bank with ties to terrorist groups and killed four Gazan terrorists, including Islamic Jihad bigwigs Mohammed Baroon and Mohammed Sheikh Khalil, who shot Tali Hatuel and her four children on the Kissufim road.

So the brave martyrs have thrown in the kaffiyeh.

The militant group Hamas announced Sunday it will stop attacks against Israelis from Gaza, after three days of violence that threatened fragile efforts toward peace between Israel and Palestinians.

“We are calling our militant group to stop their activities against the Israeli occupation outside Gaza strip,” Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, said at a news conference.

The decision followed pressure from Israel and from within the Palestinian Authority, and amid Israeli missile strikes and the arrests of more than 200 alleged Palestinian militants.

Al-Zahar cited an “internal Palestinian agreement” in calling for an end to “all the militant nature” of the celebration to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

Of course, we’ve all heard this before. The Palestinian terror groups are the grown-up, scary version of the kid on the playground who would always call out “TIME OUT!” when he was about to be tagged. So we’ll have a brief period of calm, during which the boys in Hamas will have their mommies wash their stained trousers (after all, to a fundamentalist Islamic movement, what else are women good for?) and peel all the price stickers off their new Egyptian guns. And then one of their field commanders will trip on the curb, announce that it was an unforgiveable act of Zionist aggression, and launch a few volleys of Qassams at Sderot.

Ahhh, the more things change…

Rosh Hashanah: a holiday that kicks off a season of repentance and new year’s resolutions that possess a certain timelessness, like “be nicer to your fellow humans,” “respect your teachers and parents,” and “party in a socially conscious and Jewish continuity-concerned manner.”

Now, on October 13th and15th, 2005, nine different cities across Russia, Ukraine, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and California will participate in Apples ‘n Honey 5766, a big-ass party an international celebration to ring in the Jewish New Year.

A’nH, a project sponsored by The Forest Foundation, is intended as a vehicle to promote Jewish awareness, and allow young adults between the ages of 18 to 30 to engage in a fun, social atmosphere while celebrating their Jewish identity. The events also provide a unique opportunity for Jews to network and meet each other, on a scale like never before. Festival organizers in each city, armed with a stipend of at least $2,500 from the Forest Foundation, are currently working on procuring large-sized venues and publicizing the events to the entire community. Revelers will have the chance to enjoy the A’n H drink, and as per Jewish custom, enjoy apples dipped in honey, for a truly “sweet New year.”

What’s in an A’nH? 2 parts apple juice, one part vodka, and one part honey, warmed, then served on the rocks, poured from a spanish wine bota, a goatskin leather bag used by matadors. No joke, really. Appletinis and honeydew melon shots will also be available…

“Our mission is to provide new, fun outlets for young Jews across the globe to celebrate and appreciate their identity,” says David Cygielman, the 24-year old Executive Director of the Forest Foundation. “We’re providing outlets for young Jews to be social and Jewish at the same time.” Cygielman notes that “many university students leave college with little professional experience, working jobs that pay the bills but lack meaning. Why not provide both?”

For Apples ‘n Honey, full-time staff members traveled to each city and handpicked individual students committed to improving their respective Jewish communities. Rather than distributing blank checks, the Forest Foundation engages in rigorous screening of all its employees, seeking out potential leaders and developing them into pillars of their community.

For more information about Apples ‘n Honey, please click here.

I was just watching C-Span, the commercial-free channel that likes to inject its cameras into relevant political events as well as occasional cultural events of note. This program was covering the National Book Festival and they were broadcasting a stellar line-up of speakers who were guests of the Festival.

David Brooks, who is a columnist for the NY Times and editor at The Atlantic, has an enviable record as a journalist and writer and was speaking at the Festival in order to promote his new book, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now. I found his talk about where Americans were headed politically to be engaging and funny. It seemed the large audience in attendance did as well.

Then came the question period. Now I can’t be sure whether they edit these programs and how they are edited if they do. However, the very first question asked was never completed.

Why? Because the questioner, a large white guy who looked middle class enough that you’d expect him to be carrying a bag of golf clubs in his trunk at all times, began his question to Brooks as follows: “You belong to the Jewish Zionist Neo-con cabal that took us to Iraq…”

(more…)

That’s the name of the counter-attack the Israelis are launching in response to the Hamas 40 rocket attack on the small town of Sderot.

There are a number of facets to the attack, but a couple include targeting Hamas leaders in their cars (an oldie but always a goodie), operatives and buildings. Another is to simply launch artillery attacks into Gaza. In other words, “you feel like lobbing bombs at us, expect us to lob bombs in return.”

Some people who oppose the disengagement will point to this and say that things are going wrong. I say, let’s wait a few days and see how this plays out. I don’t think the Gaza Palestinians are particularly enamored with Hamas right now.

What do you get when you cross a large group of people supporting terror, several Kassam rockets, and less than perfect explosives handling?

It’s not a joke and it’s not funny. You get 17 dead palestineans and 140 injured ones. You get knee jerk finger pointing at Israel. You get rockets fired at Israel injuring 5. Then you get retaliatory rockets fired at Hamas operatives. And it’s not likely to end there.

Here’s what you DON’T get. You don’t get effective action from the Palestinean Authority. After a 4 hour meeting, they had the following tough words for Hammas:

[The PA] calls on all Palestinian factions to stop all types of military parades and to keep all kinds of weapons out of residential neighborhoods.

Sage advice one would think: keep your weapons and explosives away from kids and the like. However, doing so would allow the IDF easier targetting of weapon storehouses and more importantly, would prevent using civilians as human shields preventing attacks. So, Muffti is guessing that this won’t happen any time soon.

At least the PA had the decency to point some fingers. The Palestinian Interior Ministry issued a statement calling on Hamas:

..to shoulder its responsibility for these … explosions instead of making accusations against others.

Well, that should move them to action. Except that they seem to have gotten over the whole ‘our rockets blew up’ thing and are now threatening revenge for the aforementioned targetted killing. Why dwell on the past? We could sit around all day trying to remember who rocketed who first. But would that really get us anywhere?

In any case, hopefully a lesson has been learned that should have been obvious: Palestinean terror is not only dangerous to Israelis. Parading around massive amounts of explosives and weaponry is a public health hazard.

See Jpost for many more sad details.

:wave:

Shabbat shalom, folks!

You know those movies where you meet a character who is so strikingly lovely that it’s a dead giveaway? They’re so pretty, they must be evil. (See Cillian Murphy, of Batman Begins and RedEye.)

Well, JDate’s gone under the knife and had itself an Extreme Makeover, and is relaunching soon. A friend forwarded an email with the link to the teaser promo, which features some rather porny music, in my humble (and of course completely unacquainted with porn) opinion. (A point independently verified by some JDaters Anonymous readers, by the way…)

And I’m sure that this version will be more beautiful and higher functioning and fair and worth the money than ever. Unless it is…um, evil.