It's raining.

I love the sweet musty smell that lingers after the first few rains of the year. The sharp fresh tang hanging in the air, after the long, hot, humid, sometimes fetid, summer.

I don't think it has rained here since the beginning of April. I love the sun, don't get me wrong; but there's nothing like the occasional sting of raindrops against the face...

All through the spring and early summer, the newspapers here were reporting about the critical water shortage, with the Kinneret - the Sea of Galilee, dropping to unprecedented levels. If it passes a predetermined red line, the newspapers reported breathlessly, the nation will be plunged into a crisis.

And so it came to pass. And nothing happened. Chastened by their apocalyptic predicitons failing to pass, the journalists sidled off to sensationalise something else. And Israelis continue to hose their 4X4's down...

(Don't be deceived by the last line - I'm no environmentalist. But I am often bemused by the proliferation of gas-guzzling motor cars and water wastage schemes in this country, given the dependence upon oil and the absence of natural water deposits that plague the country and to some extent influence its political relations with the neighbours...)

Paul McCartney performed in Tel Aviv last night. Didn't go - tickets cost too much. Instead, I went for a nice little encounter with the writer Matt Benyon Rees. Detective novels are not really to my taste, but after the entertaining evening - enlivened even further by an eccentric fellow who kept piping up that the real Palestinians are the Jews, that the Palestinians are actually the Amalekites and that eventually, Gog and Magog...ah, forget it - I'll certainly be checking his books out. I drove back home through literally deserted streets. Everyone in The Bubble, it seems, had gone to sing along to 'Live and Let Die'...

Thumbs Aloft!

My excuse for not updating my blog...

Is that it is hot. To hot to think, to write, to do anything productive. (Even read, which is a problem since I earn a significant part of my minuscule income from reading)

This also presupposes the obviously disputable fact that this blog is productive. Like any other public outpouring of random ramblings, it quite clearly cannot be deemed to so, but it does clear the mind from time to time and allows me to concentrate on more pressing things, so that helps a little.

Mrs Goy - or the Feminist Mrs Goy, as I've taken to calling her - observed the other day that with Tzipi's triumph in the Kadima primaries, Israel now has a woman at the head of each of the three arms of Government - Dalia Itzik is the Speaker of the Knesset, and Dorit Beinisch at the Supreme Court.

I'm guessing she thinks that this is a good thing.

I didn't have the heart to point out that, in any case, Tricky Udi is still loitering in the corridors of power, resignation or not. I tell you, they'll have to cart the man away in chains.

Mr Mofaz, whom I blogged about previously, seemed on the verge of tears when he conceded victory to Tzipi. He apparently wants to 'take time out from Politics'. If that is anything like Mr Barak's 'lost weekend' away from the political scene, I imagine that he'll be back in five years or so, well connected, newly minted and itching to cause mischief. If I were Mrs Mofaz, I'd watch out...

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I had lunch with my father in law last Friday, in a nice family restaurant in Ramat Aviv Gimmel. Tucked in a corner, apparently eating, conversing with a companion and chatting on his mobile all at the same time, was Abraham Hirschson. Mr Hirschson was Minister of Finance until not very long ago, when he was obliged to resign after being accused of all sorts of naughtiness involving money belonging to the National Workers Labour Federation (don't these people ever learn: never fuck with trade union money), and a charity involved with holocaust survivors from Poland. He resigned from office last July, and recently the Attorney General announced that he was to be formally charged with ' breach of trust, aggravated fraud, theft, forgery of corporate documents and money laundering'. A bit of a mouthful that.

He has an elegantly sculpted beard and sideburns arrangement, somewhat at odds with the old denim and polo shirt he was sporting. Me, I've never trusted men with kempt beards (nor women neither, come to think of it). I was briefly tempted to ask him whether his lunch was being paid for by the Histradut, the general trade union body, but thought better of it. Stones and glasshouses and all that...

Funny, when Mr Hirschson started to get into difficulties, people accused Tricky Udi of being exceptionally naive for appointing someone with antecedents as crooked as Hirschson to the post. Little did we know then...

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Completely non-Goy related: Two of my favourite writers, the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and the music critic Alex Ross, have just been awarded MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Grants. The lucky bastards. Congratulations to both.

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One writer whom I believe came very close to genius, David Foster Wallace died last week, at the age of 46. As a fiction writer, his output was sometimes uneven, but his observational journalism was, in my opinion, unparalleled. His capacity to place an event, no matter how apparently banal and trite, within its precise, informed social context is unmatched. His facility for words, and experimentation with form, syntax and the accepted rules of grammatical expression defy description.

I mention all this because he wrote an interesting, engaging and honest profile of John McCain, (MK I), for Rolling Stone Magazine in 1999, I think. Given McCain's transformation from the straight talker who abjured the dirty political tricks of his then rival, George W. Bush, to...well, a classic pol, really, it seemed apt that the New York Review of Books decided to republish Wallace's profile, slightly elongated, in book form a couple of months ago.

Israel and Israelis are obsessed with November's election - the phrase, 'but will it be good for the Jews' never seemed so apt - and although I am by no means an Obama groupie (at least, not any more, as the Feminist Mrs Goy reminds me), I think that any Israeli with dual American nationality contemplating voting for McCain would do well to read this account of what he once was first, and then decide whether they prefer the old him, the new him, or are simply confused by a man who has mutated so grotesquely, almost overnight.

Rest in peace, DFW

The Acerbic Agony Aunt

This came through an email list I subscribe to this morning:

Hi All,

Can anyone tell me, especially anyone in the Iriya, why my child
receives free Arabic lessons (just started this year kita daled) and
we have to pay for English lessons which are much more useful and
relevant?

Answer: Because the last time I checked, Arabic was an official language of Israel, and English wasn't?

Okay, I am being a little tetchy here. Perhaps English is a little more relevant, but I would argue that Arabic is more useful, in this country, today.

Particularly if you're an aspiring Mossadnik or Shabbaknik. (Tongue wedged firmly in cheek)

Right, off to deal with the cause of my techiness. An employer who fails to accept that freelance work ought to be paid for, promptly and in full. But that's another matter altogether...

Have a good day.

Note - This is a passive-aggressive way of dealing with the question, I accept. The correspondent is never going to read this. But I'm too much of a coward to reply her, either directly or on the message board...

This blog has been away

On holiday, to the two other cities he thinks of as home - London and Lagos.

Normal (irregular) service will recommence, shortly...

RedBand Rocks!

I don't watch a lot of television here - not out of any disdain for the medium (as if!) but because of the obvious language barrier. It's a bit of a paradox, actually - watching television actually improves my Hebrew, but it's too much like hard work, so...

So, it was entirely by chance that I stumbled across RedBand on Hot V.O.D. a few weeks ago. (HOT is one of the two main cable networks in Israel; the video on demand service is self explanatory)

RedBand is fronted by Red Orbach, a garrulous, hard drinking, thoroughly incorrigible, washed up Zionist musician, on the comeback trail (for some odd reason) in Israel. He is also a life sized purple puppet.

His sidekicks are Lefty on Keyboards and Pancho on Guitar. Red left Israel sometime after the Six Day War to debauch himself across the world; Pancho and Lefty stayed behind, and have been reluctantly roped into Red's comeback attempt. His other faithful companion is Philip, a rat and roadie - for this, read procurer of Columbian Marching Powder and other illegal substances

There is a guest artiste on the show every week, surprisingly keen to allow themselves to be upstaged by a swearing puppet - Aviv Geffen is told that he'll never make it as a singer with a voice like his, Efrat Gosh narrowly escape decapitation, he has a threesome with Nechama HaBanot, and Maor Cohen is mistaken for a prostitute called Chantelle who promises to do...never mind, you get the drift.

It's only partially in English - Red, although he appears to understand idiomatic Hebrew perfectly is the exception to the Hebrew speaking cast - but it's quite easy to follow, and very very wrong indeed. Imagine a cross between South Park and Spinal Tap, with lots of casual profanity chucked it, and you'll have an idea.

There's a link to a clip HERE

Perhaps he'll sing Tembel with Arkardi Duchin one day. Now that'll be a treat... (A Tembel is a Fool)

Carry A Big Stick, And Shout Loudly...

I'm intrigued by Shaul Mofaz.

I've always assumed that politicians everywhere would say anything in order to secure the votes of a gullible public. But Mr Mofaz seems to be taking this on to another level altogether.

He has blamed the current security woes in Israel on...well, me, actually: "We always take into account what the goyim will say," Mofaz said. "I don't care what the goyim will say. I care about the security of the citizens of Israel. Do you think the pictures on CNN matter to me as much as the children and their fears and the residents of Sderot and Ashkelon who have abandoned their homes? No way!"

He inadvertently (cack-handedly) caused a spike in the oil price with ill-judged (and completely unsourced) comments about Mr Ahmedinajad's obsession;

He has promised to keep Jerusalem united, for eternity;

He has promised to take direct and personal responsibility for the current 'Peace' talks between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian National Authority. On the last point, anyone with long memory would either burst out in laughter or bitter tears, but I'll come back to that in a minute.

The problem is that Mr Mofaz is saying all this just to secure a mandate from Kadima, his party, as its Prime Ministerial candidate whenever there is a general election.

(Oh, by the way, I'm refusing to say goodbye to Tricky Udi - he won't go anywhere until he's led away in shackles, methinks)

What he would do if he does secure the mandate and runs for Prime Minister is anyone's guess.

To a degree, commentators are being a bit unfair about Mofaz. As is the case in Israel, some criticism is undoubtedly rooted in a snobbery towards his Mizrahi roots, the same sort of thing that contributed to the exodus of elderly Ma'paikniks from Avoda when Amir Peretz beat Shim-Shim three and a half years ago.

(A note for the mercifully uninformed: Ma'pai was the predecessor of the present Avoda, or Labour Party. It was in government, uninterrupted, from 1948 until 1977, and is thus responsible for most of the ills of this country today. It was the establishment, WASP party - White, Ashkenazi, Secular and Paratroopers [elite military units]. Shim Shim, currently in Beijing, was the arch-Mapaiknik, but is currently, notionally, a member of Kadima)

But then...

The first thing to note is the Mofaz, unlike Peretz, is not playing the ethnic card. He can't, really, because he has been at the centre of the establishment. A former Chief of Staff and Defence Minister can hardly claim discrimination in a society as militarized as Israel.

On the other hand, like Peretz, he really does appear to be pretty much inexperienced outside his core area - which, to put it crudely, is eliminating tiresome Palestinians. At the moment, he is the country's Transport Minister, a post as influential as being a Traffic Cop. He hasn't held any of the major cabinet posts outside Defence - Finance, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Interior. He isn't surrounded by people who show any specialist knowledge in these areas. And I'm not sure he has noticed, yet.

The problem with Mofaz is that he is resolutely old school - the state of the country starts, and ends, with Ha Matzav - the situation - with the next door neighbours, and the *cousins* further afield in the Arab world. Which is correct, up to a point. However, what he doesn't realise - and what everyone else, from Bibi downwards, does - is that if one fails to keep one's eye on the ball, pretty soon there won't be much worth fighting for, what with capital flight, a slowing of inward investment, brain drain and so on manifesting a lack of faith in the Israeli economy, which is what matters. And sabre rattling, without the necessary placatory words to show that there is at least a residual interest in achieving some sort of peace with the Palestinians, isn't very 21st Century.

Furthermore, the spectre of the Second Lebanon War and the Winograd Committee still loom over him - the general consensus is that the weaknesses in the Israeli Army started to set in during his watch, and that his poor advice to Olmert during the war - bombard from the air, hold the ground troops, oh, look, the UN are actually negotiating a ceasefire, send in the ground forces quickly whilst no-one's looking - was at the centre of that fuck up.

Kadima - inasmuch as it didn't have much of a philosophy to start off with other than being King Arik's escape hatch from Likud - espouses, in public at least, a more measured approach to handling the Palestinian problem. Mofaz, in that respect, is an anachronism - he was once indiscreet enough to suggest, with a live microphone under his nose, that the Israelis take out Arafat - and probably belongs back in Likud. But since he left in a fit of pique after failing to upstage Bibi, I doubt if they'll have him back.

And, even stranger yet, Bibi probably fancies his chances of becoming Israel's next PM a lot more without Mofaz. Two hard core Bibi haters of my acquaintance have said that they will consider voting for him if Mofaz wins the Kadima primaries - akin, for them, to Turkeys voting for Christmas.

(Ehud Barak isn't a serious option, for all sorts of reasons too long and depressing to go into here. Maybe another time...)

The primaries are next month, just before the New Year. Let's see what happens...

Next: Tziporah Livni

Mahmoud Darwish

R.I.P.

"To Life I say: Go slow, wait for me until the drunkenness dries in my glass...I have no role in what I was or who I will be...it is chance and chance has no name...I call the doctor 10 minutes before the death, 10 minutes are sufficient to live by chance."