At Judean Rose you get a little bit of this and a little bit of that: food, politics, cognitive science, genealogy, religion, education, and family are all grist for my (writing) mill.
Tawil Fadiha, was probably the late, lamented Latma’s most popular character. And that’s no small thing. For those of us in the trenches fighting the media bias against Israel, Latma was everything. It was our comic relief amidst the terrible frustration of not being heard, though we were telling the truth. We waited with eagerness for each new installment and we were downright crushed when the show lost its funding (in a really sneaky way).
So it’s a big deal that our beloved Tawil Fadiha, Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Lies is back with a new song on behalf of the Legal Grounds Campaign organization, an Israel advocacy group. Could this be the beginning of a serious Latma comeback? Doesn’t seem so, but let’s just enjoy this rare gem for what it is–a delightful takedown of the fake Arab narrative. (When is the last time you heard satire reference the San Remo Conference or the Temple Mount?)
Wish you could see some more Latma? “We Con the World” was the Latma clip that went seriously viral, satirizing the Mavi Marmara incident and garnering some 6 million views. Youtube took it down for copyright violation, even though there is no copyright issue in borrowing songs for satire. Caroline Glick, the journalist who founded Latma (and appears in the clip), fought like a lioness until they put it back up.
After a terror attack, the connections come out. Israel is a small country. You almost always have some sort of connection to the victims.
With the Salomon family of Halamish, a friend I think of as a brother informed me that the young soldier who neutralized the terrorist through the kitchen window, a hero by all accounts, was his wife’s cousin, as is the young hero’s mother.
That was a nice connection, so to speak. One to make me feel pride by association. A comfort in the midst of grave horror.
But then a friend messaged me on Facebook. She wrote:
“Varda. Friday night, after we finished our Shabbat meal, some kids came to pick up our 12-year-old son Micha on their way to the youth gathering. One of those kids was Nitzan Davidi*, the niece of Michal Salomon. The Davidi* family lives not far from us.
“Later we heard there had been a pigua, a terror attack, but there were no details yet. Not until after Shabbat, when my husband came home from the synagogue and announced, “The Davidis have a new widow and her children in their home.”
“Nitzan’s mother is the sister of Michal Salomon.
“I was sick to my stomach, hunched over with terrible stomach cramps all that night. I know it’s not about me but—it came so close. Nitzan in our home while her uncle was being slaughtered.
“I went for a walk with my husband Saturday night, the night after the slaughter, to get some fresh air. We passed the Davidi home. People were milling about. Like a house of mourning. Then I saw the double stroller. I don’t know why that stood out for me, the stroller, but I was thinking: ‘Why a double stroller? Who, in the Davidi family, needs one of THOSE.’
“Later that night I read that the Salomons had one-year-old twins. One-year-old twins! What kind of monster kills a father! Sick. Just SICK.
“The whole thing was just so very close to home. I was consumed with the thought that Nitzan was in our home at the time of the slaughter, completely unaware. Just a normal kid on a Friday night, picking up her friends for a get together.
“I kept imagining Nitzan coming home happy and tired, going to sleep, and then waking up to the phone call and the keening.”
We both contemplated that for a minute. A young girl being woken from her Shabbat sleep with the worst possible news. Her home transformed to one of deep mourning.
My friend’s experience seemed to touch me by association. The murders in Halamish, the plight of the young widow and her children were more real than ever. I began to imagine the kids hearing their father, grandfather, and aunt being slaughtered, the screams. How would they ever be normal?
It was setting in, the horror, in a new way. There was a new association now. I felt like I knew the family. I could picture the Davidi family. The house. The stroller.
On Tuesday my friend had more to tell me. She eased into it with small talk about diet, mine and hers, working her way around to the terror attack.
“Nitzan’s father, the brother in-law of Michal Salomon? We were chatting and got to talking about the massacre, of course. It’s hard to think about anything else. Yaron* said that terrorists dope themselves up with drugs before they do their thing. They have to be high to do it.”
I shrugged, “Everyone knows that.”
“Well, I didn’t,” she said.
“Anyway, Yaron described the attack to me! He said that Elad [Salomon, Michal’s husband] had the terrorist in a bear hug as the terrorist was stabbing him. Thirty times the terrorist stabbed him in the back. Then he went to work on his face.
“I managed to ask Yaron about Nitzan. ‘When did she know?’
“‘Oh, she was already in bed and sound asleep when we got the call,’ he said.”
There was a pause while my friend let that sink in for me. Observant Jews don’t use the phone on Shabbat. There is only one reason a phone rings like that. It was Michal calling, telling them what had happened.
It’s good that Nitzan was able to sleep through that night, I thought. One more night of childhood innocence before learning of the evil that had hit her aunt and uncle, HY”D, may Hashem avenge the blood of the Salomons.
I know that all Jews are related to each other multiple times. We’re a small nation that was forced to marry cousins in the Diaspora. So I knew in theory that I was related to Michal Salomon, to her husband Elad, his father and sister, and to Nitzan and Yaron, too.
Now I felt it, as well.
These are the details you don’t see in the news. These are the quiet, intimate, awful details that are whispered, that almost aren’t whispered, so painful are they to speak of.
Most of us have been thinking about the brave soldier, thinking of Michal Salomon, her courage and strength in taking her children upstairs to the bedroom, locking the door, calling the police.
But now I am thinking of something else: there’s a different picture in my mind, the one that explains all that blood on the floor that we saw in the photos. I’m thinking of Elad, holding the terrorist in a bear hug with all his might, trying to keep him from hurting anyone else, taking all that pain, being stabbed thirty times in the back, and then finally, as his strength ebbs away, being stabbed repeatedly in the face, his final memory one of a knife coming much too close, so close, so many times.
And we don’t even know how it went with Elad’s father and sister.
It’s personal, you see. This massacre of a Jewish family. It hurts.
This is my family, even if I never knew them. This terrorist that came to hurt this beautiful family? He acted out of pure evil. His soul is black as tar. A monster, not a human being.
And now there is a new widow who must try to heal children who heard their father, grandfather, and aunt being slaughtered. Michal must try to make their nightmares go away while mourning the love of her life. But the nightmares will never disappear.
That is who they will always be, the Salomon children, from here on in. They and their mother: they will always be those nightmares. The massacre of Halamish.
A German reporter presses an Arab woman, Maria Abunismeh, in order to understand the Arab objection to enhanced security measures on the Temple Mount, in the clip below. He asks: “So many people in Germany don’t really understand. They say, you know there was a terror attack, two policemen were killed by weapons that were inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. They came out, shot the policemen, and went inside. Why don’t you want these security metal gates, at the entrance?”
Her response?
“No, no. What they say it’s not true. Do you believe them? They say everything. Many stories say. But this is our Aqsa, this holy place. This is all Muslim.”
The German reporter responds, “So which part don’t you believe? That the policemen weren’t killed?” and this goes on and on, with Maria spinning her wheels weaving a nonsensical story, the German reporter trying to understand exactly what it is she believes.
The money quote? Maria, explaining that the official story about the terror attack and the need for heightened security are bogus, says, “Yahud always lie.”
Get that? Not “Israelis.” But “Jews.”
“Yahud” being Arabic for “Jews.”
But watch for yourselves. See how Maria weaves her story to an (illogical) conclusion: The dead policemen shot themselves!!!
Now that I’ve seen Wonder Woman I know exactly why Lebanon, Tunisia, and Algeria have banned the movie (and Jordan wanted to but couldn’t figure out how to legally do so). Gal Gadot is STUNNING and JEWISH and ISRAELI and her character Wonder Woman is STRONG and BRAVE and GOOD.
Just like the IDF.
The Arab world that slanders and hates us simply can’t take it that instead of being the evil thing they say we are, this movie, as embodied by Gal Gadot, portrays us as the good guy, the righteous ones. The ones who don’t like to fight but who are not going to shy away from making things right in the world. And if that means killing bad guy jihadists then we’re going to go full on CRAZY on them until they are DEAD and the world is SAFE.
Because that’s who we are. We’re JEWS.
The Jews brought morality to the world with our God-given Torah. Before the Torah, there was no concept that stealing or murder or sleeping around was wrong. We brought all that to the world.
The world? They can try to smear Israel and the IDF all they want, but we know who we are and Gal is a symbol of that, a symbol of morality.
We treat minorities in our country with utmost respect and tolerance.
We are the good guys.
And they just can’t handle that.
They don’t want their people to see that on a screen. Jews good? Can’t allow our people to see or know that. Even if it’s just a fantasy, just stunts and trick photography.
Because that film sums up the struggle of Israel and the Jewish people as a force for good in the world.
And Gal was chosen out of all women to play that role.
Because she is absolutely perfect.
Because she is who she is.
A strong, Jewish woman. Kind and good.
Thank you Sharon Katz for bringing 125 women together to cheer for Gal at Cinema City in the heart of the holy Jewish city, Jerusalem.
This disturbing sign labeling Israel “Apartheid” was spotted by my eyes on the ground in South Africa, Gillian Hirschfield Lawrenz. She wrote: “Seen today outside Oliver Tambo International airport in Johannesburg.”
It remains mind boggling to me that anyone in South Africa could compare the state of Arab Jewish relations in Israel with that of South Africa during the Apartheid era. In Israel, Arabs are treated in the same hospitals as Jews and even share rooms. Arabs shop alongside Jews in supermarkets and malls. Arabs ride alongside Jews on our trains and buses. We have Arab justices in the Israeli supreme court, and Arab members of Knesset.
Did you have all that in South Africa during Apartheid? Black judges in your high courts? Blacks shopping alongside whites? Blacks sharing hospital rooms with whites? Could blacks ride on buses with whites, sharing a seat perhaps?
Of course not. In the South Africa of the Apartheid era, whites looked down on black people. Black people were forbidden to mix with whites. And there isn’t anyone alive in South Africa who does not know this.
But you know where there is Apartheid in Israel? Wherever Arabs live, play, and work. Jews dare not ride Arab buses or enter Arab villages, or they’ll be LYNCHED. That’s not just talk. It has actually happened.
It is, by the way, against the law for Jews to enter PA territory. There are warning signs outside of every Arab village.
Note that the sign references “Israeli citizens.” Here’s a newsflash for you: no one is going to arrest an Israeli Arab for visiting his cousins. Where you see “Israeli citizens” read “Jew.”
Note also that the reason Abbas doesn’t want Jews to build settlements is because he not only wants Jewish territory, but wants it Jew free, or as they said in Nazi Germany, judenrein. Which is ironic, considering that Israel, on attaining statehood, didn’t expel its Arab populace. That’s right. All those supposed Arab “refugees” are those who left (and their children and children’s children) at the behest of the Arab states that attacked the new State of Israel. They said, in essence, “Get out of the way. We’re going to whup Jewish butt and then you can return home.”
Those Arab “refugees” left of their own volition. No Jew made them leave. That’s not how we roll.
Apartheid? They keep using that word. And in South Africa they know exactly what it means. Which means they’re simply LYING Sons of You Know Whatsies.
