Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Academentia, part [lost count]

Adloyada has the goods on the "tool" behind the latest NAFTHE academic boycott chazzerei in the UK.

UPDATE: more at Adloyada, suggesting there may be an angle of pre-merger power struggle between the AUT (representing traditional academia) and NAFTHE (representing the, you know, East St.Hubbins College of Laundry Administration type tertiary institutions).

UPDATE 2: well, Adloyada is quite a gold mine, this time with an extensive quote from Physics Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg on just why this proposed boycott is too idiotic for words.

Michael Totten in Ramallah

Michael Totten continues his "fact-finding regular Joe" tour of the Middle East in... Ramallah. Go read the whole thing, although if he finds a pathological liar like Saeb Erekat "one of the most honorable Palestinian politicians" it says a lot about what the rest are like. And, as a commenter points out, the DFLP that now opposes all attacks against ISraeli civilians (or even soldiers within the pre-1967 border) was responsible for the 1974 Ma`alot massacre. (It's possible they may have changed a bit since then, but color me skeptical...)

And make sure to read all the comments --- there's some great stuff there (sadly, no permalinks), such as an extended excerpts from Martha Gellhorn's 1961 Atlantic Monthly piece (full text in for-pay Atlantic Monthly archive; summary by Neo-Neocon).

Fair Trade

In the comments on an article about renewed attempts at academic boycott by the British tertiary education union, "Don" suggests a "fair trade" to end what leftist tools call the ap*rtheid wall:

I believe in fair trade. Brittan can send all Jews living there to Israel, and Israel can send all the Palestinians to Brittan. This would solve many problems. [...] Israel on the other hand could saf[e]ly take down the fence, re-settle the settlers and have room for more Jewish people that wish to leave the anti-sem[i]tic everyday life of Europe.

Iscar sold for USD$4B to Warren Buffett

Legendary investor Warren Buffett bought 80% of Israeli machining tools company ISCAR for US$4B.

ISCAR, founded by German-Jewish refugee Stefan Wertheimer, is one of the crown jewels of Israel's economy, and Wertheimer one of Israel's true visionaries.

Porcupine Tree frontman moves to Tel-Aviv

Steven Wilson, the brain behind progressive rock group Porcupine Tree as well as an acclaimed record producer, has no Jewish roots and in fact very little time for organized religion. Yet he decided to... move to Israel.

The Tree's own "In absentia" is one of the more played rock albums on my iPod. But perhaps the outstanding album Wilson had a hand in was the haunting and elegiac "Damnation" by Swedish progressive metal band Opeth, on which Wilson appeared as producer and keyboardist, besides co-writing the song "Death whispered a lullaby". Wilson has a long-standing collaboration with Aviv Geffen (don't ask!) and is set to produce the next album by Israeli metal band Orphaned Land.

A cabinet is emerging

As compiled from here, here, and here, a cabinet is now emerging.

As "Rasputin" Lieberman's party is out, Kadima ends up getting quite a bit more than originally thought.

• Ehud Olmert: Prime Minister
  
• Shimon Peres: Deputy PM and Minister in charge of Negev and Galilee development
  
• Tzipi Livni: vice-PM and Foreign Affairs (clearly up to the job)
  
• Shaul Mofaz: vice-PM and Transportation Minister
  
• Avraham Hirschson: Finance Minister
  
• Avi Dichter: Internal Security (former Shin Bet chief, obvious choice)
  
• Roni Bar-On: Interior Minister (what?!?)
  
• Chaim Ramon: Justice Minister
  
• Ze'ev Boim: Immigrant Absorption
  
• Gideon Ezra: Environment (no comprendo)
  
• Meir Shitreet: Housing and Construction (+control of Israel Lands Authority)
  
• Yaacov Edri: Minister w/o Portfolio
  

Some of these choices are no-brainers in terms of competence. Tzipi Livni is clearly on a roll at the Foreign Ministry; Avi Dichter earned his spurs as chief of the Shin Bet during Intifada II. But some appointments do not make any sense to me. Former Shin Bet official Gideon Ezra for Environment?! Not to mention a political hack par excellence like Roni Bar-On (the central figure in the "Bar-On for Hebron" influence peddling scandal, who was attorney-general for something like 12 hours under Netanyahu before being forced to resign).

And speaking of political hacks, the idea of Dalia Itzik as Speaker of the Knesset makes me lose my last three meals.

WHat about Labour?

• Amir Peretz: Defense Minister
  
• Yuli Tamir: Education Minister
  
• Shalom Simchon: Agriculture Minister
  
• Binyamin "Fuad" Ben-Eliezer: National Infrastructure Minister
  
• Isaac "Bougie" Herzog: Tourism
  
• Ophir Pines-Paz: Sports and Jerusalem Affairs
  
• Eitan Cabel: Public Broadcast Ministry (what?!)
  

I don't trust Yuli Tamir (she smells a bit too much of "left"ist humanities academe for my taste), but at least she has qualifications to be Education Minister. Shalom Simchon has held the Agriculture portfolio in at least one government I can remember off-hand. But Amir Peretz as Defense Minister?!? G-d help us.
And what sort of a monster is the ministry for Sports and Jerusalem Affairs? Already today, I heard jokes being told about "Minister for Beitar Jerusalem" (one of Israel's two most popular soccer teams).

Or why a new completely redundant ministry of "public broadcasting" is being created for a small-time political hack. (However, see below.)

The Pensioners' Party will get the Labor and Social Affairs portfolio, plus a newly created Ministry for Senior Citizens Affairs.

Finally, Shas (appropriately, the name sounds the same as the Belgian Dutch and French slang word for a toilet flush) will get

• Trade and Industry (minus control of the Israel Lands Authority)
  
• Communications Ministry (minus control of the Israel Broadcast Authority, see above, and thank G-d)
  
• A minister without portfolio "in charge of religious services" (i.e., the late and unlamented Ministry of Religious Affairs being recreated through the back door)
  
• One minister without portfolio
  

I have no idea which cretin gets to warm which chair and couldn't care less.

One portfolio is missing from the above lists: Science and Technology, which makes me wonder whether this will be a consolation prize for erstwhile Ben-Gurion University chancellor Prof. Avishai Braverman. No such prizes will be available for Ami Ayalon and Matan Vilna'i, other Labor losers against seventh-rate political hacks.

UPDATE: click "see more" for the final cabinet. So Braverman didn't even get Science and Technology --- in the end Ophir Pines got that, and Culture and Sports (which used to be the same ministry, go figure) are attached to the Education Ministry.

The canard of "Hitler's 150,000 Jewish soldiers"

During Yom ha-Shoah, a documentary was broadcast with the misleading title (thought up by whatever yellow journaljismer) "Hitler's 150,000 Jewish soldiers". The documentary itself was fairly historical, except for, as noted, the title. Needless to say, such sensationalism not only makes people watch, but is grist on the mill of Israel's enemies, as can be seen in the talkbacks to this article. Here are my own comments:

The 1939 census of the Third Reich found 70,000 "first-degree Mischlinge" [two Jewish grandparents, not married to Jews and not members of the Jewish religion], 40,000 "second-degree Mischlinge" [one Jewish grandparent], and tens of thousands of Mischlinge of higher orders.

Jews according to the Nazi (y"sh) definition (three or more Jewish grandparents, or two and married to a Jew, or two and members of the Jewish religious community) could NOT serve and did NOT serve [in the Wehrmacht].

[The SS had a more stringent standard: candidates had to furnish proof of Aryan ancestry going back to 1750. Many made a living in Nazi Germany as "Ahnenforscher" (genealogy researchers) who furnished such documentation.]

The misleading title "Hitler's Jewish soldiers" refers to Mischlinge of the 1st and 2nd degrees, who were at various times eligible for drafting into the Wehrmacht but could not become officers. (Mischlinge were half-citizens in a kind of legal limbo: their status was to be clarified after the war. Thank G-d the Nazis lost it.) As the total number of Mischlinge of all degrees was about 150,000 --- and only a small section of them was of military age --- every single word in the "150,000 Jewish soldiers" is wrong: there weren't 150,000, and most of those were not Jewish by any relevant standard (no Jewish mother, not members of the Jewish religion, not identifying with Jewish culture,...) In addition, many of those drafted were recalled in early 1940 and never saw frontline action.

Those seeking a more "Aryan" classification could apply for a change in status (from Jew to 1st degree, from 1st to 2nd, from 2nd to Aryan,...) Such application were PERSONALLY reviewed by Hitler (y"sh) himself, and a couple thousand people obtained status changes or "Aryanization" certificates. For instance, a high Luftwaffe officer (Erhard Milch, also the 1st CEO of Lufthansa) with a Jewish legal father was "Aryanized" after (dubiously, but with the support of Goering y"sh) claiming that his biological father was his mother's Aryan lover.

Pop music without Jews

Julie Burchill (who's a 100% kosher Gentile, by the way) looks at what the history of popular music would have been without Jews, and apparently shares my opinion about much of what passes for popular "music" today.

Interestingly, one of my favorite music genres (progressive rock) was pioneered almost 100% by Julie's fellow British Gentiles. Considering its musical roots that shouldn't be overly surprising though: aside from rock and Beatles-era pop, there was Anglo folk music (both directly and via the Fab Four), Western classical music, and... Protestant church music...

Coalition: white smoke

All of a sudden, a coalition agreement appears to have been reached [JPost coverage; Yediot coverage. The government will consist of Kadima, Labor, Gil [=the pensioners' party], Shas [=Khomeinist Neanderthalers], United Torah Judaism [its Ashkenazi equivalent], Yisrael Beiteinu [=rightist Russian immigrant party].

According to the deal, Labor will be given the Defense Ministry for [Amir "anusclown"] Peretz [G-d help us all], the Education Ministry for [Prof.] Yuli Tamir, the Agriculture Ministry for Shalom Simhon, the National Infrastructure Ministry, the Tourism Ministry and two Ministries-without-Portfolio. Peretz is expected to recommend to the Labor central committee that MKs Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, [current faction chair/chief whip] Ophir Paz-Pines, Isaac Herzog and Eitan Cabel[, respectively,] be given the portfolios. [...] MK Ephraim Sneh, who is a former general will assist Peretz as deputy defense minister, a title he held under Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. Herzog, who will apparently be a Minister-without-Portfolio, and MKs Avishay Braverman and Ami Ayalon, who will not be ministers, were disappointed by news of the agreement.

Labor, of course, had insisted on the Treasury for Peretz (which gave most of our business community ulcers just thinking about). In return for backing down they got the plum Education ministry, which had already been earmarked for Interdisciplinary Center chancellor and erstwhile Shinui founder Prof. Uriel Reichman.

Reichman's aides said he would reject the offer and instead return to the presidency of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center that he founded.

Meanwhile, of course, that job had already been filled by the retired veteran MK and constitutional law specialist, Prof. Amnon Rubinstein.

Kadima will keep the Foreign Affairs, Finance, Interior, Justice, Transportation and Negev and Galilee Development portfolios.

The good news, here, is that Tzipi Livni --- who by all accounts is doing a sterling job at the Foreign Ministry --- will stay on in the job. The bad news is for Reichman, outgoing defense minister Shaul Mofaz, and for Kadima in general.

Shas will be given Housing and Construction for chairman Eli Yishai, Communications for MK Ariel Atias and a Minister-without-Portfolio in the Finance Ministry for Yitzhak Cohen.

United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz will continue to control the Welfare Ministry and UTJ chairman Ya'acov Litzman the Knesset Finance Committee.

(FB suppresses urge to vomit.)

Israel Beiteinu will be given the Internal Security Ministry for chairman Avigdor ["Rasputin"] Lieberman, the Immigrant Absorption portfolio for Yuri Shtern and the Science and Technology Ministry.

So Internal Security goes from one semi-crook to another. The Science and Technology ministry is in practice insignificant as most of its budget goes to pay salaries of ministry staff --- most science funding in Israel is controlled by either the Council for Higher Education (via the Israel Academy of Sciences) or the Chief Scientists attached to such ministries as Defense, Trade and Industry, and the like.

Israel Beiteinu officials said they were upset that the coalition guidelines refer to evacuating settlements in Judea and Samaria. But a Kadima negotiating team member said he expects Israel Beiteinu to give in because Lieberman wants to join the government. Deputy Immigrant Absorption Minister Marina Solodkin of Kadima will apparently not be a minister.

The Gil Pensioners Party will be given the Health Ministry and a new ministry for senior citizens affairs. Party chairman Rafael Eitan [=Jonathan Pollard's alleged former handler] will hold the latter post while MKs Ya'acov Ben-Yizri and Moshe Sharoni will compete over the former.

[...]
"It was imperative to speed up the formation of the government in light of the recent security developments," a Kadima negotiating team member said. "Olmert met with Peretz because it is in the supreme national interest to preserve stability and national unity in order to better face the great challenges that lie ahead."

Like a hole in the head

[On screen.] Israel used to be one of a few countries where the bizarre situation existed that child allowances increase superlinearly (if not exponentially) with the number of children. In practice, the system was geared to provide the largest possible child allowances to the two population sectors that have the largest families: the ultra-Orthodox (a.k.a. "chareidim") and the Arabs.

Israel has two ultra-Orthodox political formations: United Torah Judaism (itself a cartel list of the chasidic Agudat Yisrael and the non-chasidic Degel HaTorah) and Shas. Both parties are notorious, even by Israeli standards, in their single-minded pursuit of narrow sectorial interests. (Readers of this blog may wonder why I often single out Shas for vitriolic comments: rest assured I have no love lost for the all-Ashkenazi UTJ either. It just happens to be that UTJ has no significant voter base outside its ultra-Orthodox constituency --- unlike Shas, which attracts a considerable number of non-chareidi voters by relentlessly harping on ethnic/cultural grievances among Jews of non-Western origins. As such, UTJ is simply less dangerous than Shas.)

One of these sectorial interests is a system of entitlements that finances an unproductive lifestyle. Ultra-Orthodox community leaders encourage men not to seek gainful employment, but rather to study full-time in yeshivot (religious seminaries) --- whether they are laid out for this lifestyle or not. Women may work out of the house to support their husbands, but the combination of limited education (unlike in the USA, almost no Israeli ultra-Orthodox go to college) and continuous childbearing severely limits economic opportunities. As a result, this lifestyle is only economically sustainable with generous government handouts.

Full-time yeshiva students do receive small stipends from the state --- but these cannot possibly support families with 12 children and up (not uncommon in these circles). Nor can they be appreciably increased without drawing the ire of virtually the entire Israeli public --- who resent the chareidim as being both freeloaders and religiously coercive. What did prove possible in the past was to create a child allowance system under which small families got peanuts, but very large families get allowances that well exceed the median wage every month.

As a system of covering actual childcare expenses, this is an absurdity --- everyone who has raised a number of children knows that precisely the first child is the most expensive, as nothing can be handed down or shared. But every attempt to make the system more equitable was fought tooth and nail by the chareidi parties (and by the Arab parties, which command less clout).

Until the Sharon government, which was the first in a long time to dispense with the dubious services of both Shas and UTJ, and had the stridently secularist Shinui party on board instead. Then a reform in child allowances was instated which over time would gradually "linearize" child allowances. Within its first years of implementation, large numbers of ultra-Orthodox and Arab families were hard hit, as what amounted to a strategy of "breeding to maximize child allowances" backfired on them big time. The child allowance reform may have materially widened the gap between rich and poor in Israel.

I voted for Kadima despitee my personal misgivings about Olmert and Shimon Peres. One trait which these unlikely bedfellows share is their willingness to "sell their grandmothers for dog meat to make a coalition with the chareidim" (as one of my friends put it). But sadly, Kadima's less than decisive victory --- coupled with the disintegration of Shinui and the understandable desire of a badly shaken Likud to seek an "opposition cure" --- in fact does not leave too many other options open in any case. Now reports of coalition talks suggest that Olmert would get UTJ on board in exchange for reversing the child allowance reform.

And who is going to pay for this? You guessed it: the already tiny allowances for the first two children will be cut down to almost nothing to finance drastically increasing those for large families.

The sages of Chelm (the mythological town of fools in Yiddish stories) would have been proud.