Author: Gil

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C’est Levy

Bernhard-Henri Levy wrote an excellent essay from and about Israel in the NYTimes last Sunday:

Zivit Seri is a tiny woman, a mother, who speaks with clumsy, defenseless gestures as she guides me through the destroyed buildings of Bat Galim — literally “daughter of the waves,” the Haifa neighborhood that has suffered most from the shellings. The problem, she explains, is not just the people killed: Israel is used to that. It’s not even the fact that here the enemy is aiming not at military objectives but deliberately at civilian targets — that, too, is no surprise. No, the problem, the real one, is that these incoming rockets make us see what will happen on the day — not necessarily far off — when the rockets are ones with new capabilities: first, they will become more accurate and be able to threaten, for example, the petrochemical facilities you see there, on the harbor, down below; second, they may come equipped with chemical weapons that can create a desolation compared with which Chernobyl and Sept. 11 together will seem like a mild prelude. For that, in fact, is the situation. As seen from Haifa, this is what is at stake in the operation in southern Lebanon.

Israel did not go to war because its borders had been violated. It did not send its planes over southern Lebanon for the pleasure of punishing a country that permitted Hezbollah to construct its state-within-a-state. It reacted with such vigor because the Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be wiped off the map and his drive for a nuclear weapon came simultaneously with the provocations of Hamas and Hezbollah. The conjunction, for the first time, of a clearly annihilating will with the weapons to go with it created a new situation. We should listen to the Israelis when they tell us they had no other choice anymore. We should listen to Zivit Seri tell us, in front of a crushed building whose concrete slabs are balancing on tips of twisted metal, that, for Israel, it was five minutes to midnight.

As a bonus, he also manages to bring kaballah and rocketry together (a little easier at that permeable border than Pynchon’s merkabah mysticism).

There’s also a neat article by Barry Rubin in the current ish of Foreign Affairs about Israel’s security strategy (reg. required), written before the kidnappings by Hamas and Hezbollah. While it doesn’t predict the very current events, it does help explain the political and military evolution of Israel’s strategy of withdrawing from southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

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Now is the Time When the Matador Meets the Blind Shoemaker

Amy & I went out to see Talladega Nights this afternoon. It was a hoot (but no 40-Year-Old Virgin, and it featured the tallest lead cast ever, with major screen time going to Will Ferrell (6’3″), John C. Reilly (6’1″), Michael Clarke Duncan (6’5″) and Sascha Baron Cohen (6’4″). We felt that they should have added either Tim Robbins or Tom Cruise.

We bought the movies at a ticket kiosk outside the theater. A printed note was taped next to the screen on each kiosk, to let moviegoers know that the trailer for World Trade Center would be shown before The Devil Wears Prada and You, Me and Dupree. If any of you readers from outside the NYC metro area went to the movies this weekend, did you see any similar notice, or is this something that they’re just particularly sensitive about in this region?

I saw the commercial for World Trade Center a few weeks ago while I was donating at the blood center over in Linwood. I admit that I had a hard time figuring out if the clips it showed were effective movie-making or if I’m still too strongly affected by the imagery. I know it’s not exactly summertime fare, so it’s kinda odd that the studio chose to drop the film just now.

On the other hand, Amy & I were pretty happy to find out that Idlewild is coming out in a few weeks, because

a) it means that there’s a new OutKast album, and

b) it means that we can meet up with official VM buddy Mark F. and see the flick at his local theater: the Magic Johnson Theater up in Harlem!

There’s also Little Miss Sunshine, Borat and Jackass 2 to see, so I might actually get out to the movies a few times before the end of the year! In the last few years, I’ve gone to fewer and fewer flicks, largely because I can’t be bothered. But Amy’s a good influence on me, getting me out to see important films with moments like this one.

In other news, my brother, his wife and their two daughters are in town for a week. We’re all planning to go down to the shore for a day. This time, I’ll remember to bring my camera to the boardwalk (and I’ll buy some goofy T-shirts, Tina). We picnicked up in a botanical garden on Saturday, and I got to tell the kids (6 and 3) outrageous lies about The Hunchback of Skylands Manor and The Slav in the Iron Mask. They love me.

I’m also battling a milder case of poison ivy than the one I got hit with around Memorial Day. I spent Friday afternoon with My Pal The Chainsaw, taking down some of the dead and decaying trees in the yard. While I did wear long sleeves and long pants, I managed to get a little of the evil stuff on my forearms, an inch or so above the wrists.

This pisses me off greatly, since it now means I’m going to have to get a biohazard suit for the next time I go out to clear more of the yard. Or I can hire some landscapers, warn ’em about the poison ivy, and let them take care of things.

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Good and Bad

The good news: Official VM just-about-closest-friend-in-the-world Ian just got promoted to Chief Petty Officer. At first, I thought this meant he was quitting the Navy to become a roadie for Tom Petty, but then I realized that it’s actually “the most significant promotion within the enlisted Navy ranks,” according to Wikipedia. I’m hoping it’s accurate, as opposed to this hilarious story from The Onion. So, congrats!

The bad news: One of my uncles in Israel had to flee for the shelters last night. He writes,

The nightmare becomes reality. At about 2100 this evening (Erev Shabbat) the sirens began to wail. Only my daughter and myself were about and we both made straight for the shelter. The siren seemed to go on for ever. After about a minute silence. A few seconds later we heard a distant boom. More like a thud. We waited a few minutes more and emerged unscathed from the shelter.

It seems that three rockets fell in the vicinity of Hadera. No casualties reported so far. Spent the rest of the evening watching Clint Eastwood’s recent masterpiece: “Million Dollar Baby.” It was difficult getting the siren out of my mind. Latest news is that the IAF has taken the launchers out but I assume that they still have more launchers. Ah well, tomorrow’s another day. It always is!

I just finished re-reading the first segment of Gravity’s Rainbow, “inspired” by the rocket attacks. It’s “about” the German rocket attacks on England during WWII, focusing on the V-2 rocket. Since that one flew supersonically, the impact would occur before the sound of its approach. Pynchon’s characters (including several behavioral scientists) are fascinated by this concept, with the way our perception of cause and effect gets reversed.

Of course, in the Middle East, we all have our own problems with sorting out cause and effect.