January 2009
Israel has a right to defend itself.
Outcome at the end of this month:
More than 1300 + 14; or 1300/14; or 1300 - 14; or?
Meanwhile:
The election committee of Israel's parliament decided to exclude the two main Arab parties from the parliamentary elections in February alleging that they are disloyal to Israel. The decision has been overturned by the Israeli judiciary. Thanks.
On 25 January, Herbert Pundik wrote in Politiken:
"The principle was, as admitted from the military side, to soften the opposition by overwhelming firepower before an attack in order to save Israeli soldiers’ lives. Since many of the Hamas guerrillas had sought a position on the roofs of Gaza City, from where they shot at the Israeli forces, Israeli artillery shot at the houses to kill the shooters, leading to the result , which can be seen on television. Entire neighbourhoods were laid flat." (My translation from Danish)
Israel has a right to defend itself. HOW?
According to the English language web-site of Ha'aretz on a secret report prepared by the Government of Israel (accessed 31 January):
"An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued. The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents." According to international law, the colonization of occupied land by the occupying power is illegal. Israel, however, does not consider itself as an occupying power in the West Bank. Its is now public that Israeli law is regularly broken and even neglected by the Israeli Government in the settlement process in the West Bank. Lawlessness rules. There are similarities with the situation in Guantanamo, but also differences - for example in the scale.
With what RIGHT can Israel claim its RIGHT to defend itself?
Asking that question is not to say that anybody has a RIGHT to fire rockets or other dangerous devices at Israeli civilians and non-combatants. It is also not to wish the death of any Israeli soldier.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Saturday, 20 December 2008
Voyage through Germany
The traveller left the reunion of dormitory mates, who had shared a “corridor” at the Egmont Kollegium in Copenhagen nearly 40 years before, a little early. The venue was the house of one of the mates and his wife, near Haderslev, in southern Jutland. A lot had been achieved during Saturday: A superb lunch in the garden, an excursion to Christiansfeld with a guided tour through the small town replete with the Herrnhuter Protestant Fraternal Community, and a picnic in the small forest; then the mildly ritualistic dinner, this time with exquisite game and matching wines. Songs, speeches, chatting, good spirits. The outlandish collection of hunting trophies including several dangerous bears, which had been expertly shot and skilfully stuffed, could not be forgotten.
The host and hunter understood the traveller’s desire to leave early and drove him to the railway station. The conversation was gentle, about pensions, getting on with life, places to live, arrangements to make.
The traveller had a little more than an hour to kill, while waiting for a connecting train in Hamburg. Posters told him that an exhibition by the painter Rothko was on in the city. Having often heard the name of this modern painter, but not really knowing his work, he decided that the exhibition would be the best place to spend the time. After first going in the wrong direction and getting too close to people who looked like drug addicts, homeless East Europeans or both, the traveller found the exhibition and saw Rothko’s paintings. Some paintings with large monochrome rectangles or bands, which were not quite monochrome, because the colour in each rectangle was variegated and often much darker, kind of burnt, towards the edges, made a strong impression. They were good, artistic, strong. Yet, the traveller got mildly irritated by two things: There were too many of these good paintings of rectangles: At some point Mark Rothko had started copying himself, living off a formula that worked? The other irritation was more sinister, as the traveller recognized at once. He did not like the fact that Mark Rothko was Jewish: two many of the people who had made it in New York were Jewish. Could others not get a chance?
Back in the railway station, the traveller just managed to get about one kg of German Sunday newspaper and a magazine to enjoy on the onward journey. He was headed for Basel in Switzerland, where he worked, but had made arrangements for stopping over in Bad Arolsen. While he was deeply immersed in an article in die Welt about the decay of musical culture in Germany or some such subject, another traveller came to his reserved seat, insisting it was his. ‘Sorry, I have a reservation for this seat until Kassel, you can see for yourself, but, we have just left Fulda, the train passed Kassel long ago, oh I see, dammit, you are right. With a weary and haughty look, our traveller got up, found an empty seat, descended at the next station, took a train back to Kassel, explained himself to a member of the Zug team, thus avoided paying, and hence arrived in Bad Arolsen at nearly 11 at night. A taxi took him to the reserved hotel, where, surprisingly he was able to have a lonely dinner in a garden restaurant, sitting close to a very civilized wine drinking party.
The following day, he easily found the International Tracing Service for holocaust victims. The young lady with whom he had an appointment was well dressed in a blue jeans suit and a white linen shirt. At first, she gave the traveller printouts that she had already prepared. They were copies of personal registration cards, which referred to train transports for the two persons, who were travelling in 1942 from Prague to “unknown destination” according to some Czech text on the cards, which were otherwise in German. The sympathetic lady explained that the numeric code on the cards meant that the train was headed for the Lublin-Maidanek camp in eastern Poland. ‘But in my family, we have always assumed that they had been taken to Auschwitz, yes, in fact, the Red Cross Centre also assumed that until some years ago, but newer research has sorted out the destination of all the trains (or maybe most of them) deporting people to concentration or extermination camps. The two persons whose fate so interested the traveller were an elderly couple in 1942, though not very elderly. He, whose first name was Simon Majer, was 61 years old and she, Janka, was 53. The German lady and the traveller agreed that in Maidanek they would both have been selected for getting killed as rapidly as possible. Probably by gas, but shooting could not be excluded.
The journey from Prague to Maidanek probably took something like 20-24 hours. It is much longer than Prague – Oswiecim (Auschwitz). The traveller thought that the travel time could be further investigated, but under all circumstances, it would have been a torture. As the journey took place mainly standing in wagons normally used for livestock and no food or drink was likely to be available, it was possible that one or both of the persons mentioned would have died before arriving in Maidanek. According to a post-card (the last) sent by Simon Majer one month before the deportation in 1942 to his son, who then lived in Denmark, where he later begat the traveller, Janka had been in poor health then. The postcard had been shown to the traveller by his mother around 1960 in Copenhagen.
The traveller tried obtaining information on a number of other people, close relatives of Janka and Simon Majer, while in Bad Arolsen, but despite the patient assistance of the staff of the Tracing Service and its well designed search machines, it was not possible to find anything to match those other persons.
Having said good-bye to the helpful people and the quaint little town, the traveller continued his journey to Kassel and on to Basel with a sense of mission accomplished - although, in reality nothing had been accomplished, but nothing more could be done, he felt.
On arrival in Basle, the traveller scanned the two printouts and sent them to others, who were as interested in the information, as he was. A few weeks later, he discussed with one of them, whether such efforts were worthwhile. ‘We must look to the future, yes, but we must also know the past, I think that we as survivors have an obligation to bear witness to what exactly is the truth and not allow it to be abused by those who deny it or by those who abuse it for political agendas, which are not justified. Yes, but one should not become obsessed, there are so many people suffering now and needing help, yes, that is true, but still’.
Some months later, the traveller wrote the above and decided to acknowledge the great writer, José Saramago, whose style he is humbly imitating. Since it is so easy, he then looked up Saramago on Wikipedia and discovered that the Nobel Prize winner had written in 2002 in the respected Spanish newspaper, El Pais:
“ Intoxicated mentally by the messianic dream of a Greater Israel which will finally achieve the expansionist dreams of the most radical Zionism; contaminated by the monstrous and rooted 'certitude' that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God and that, consequently, all the actions of an obsessive, psychological and pathologically exclusivist racism are justified; educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted, or is being inflicted, or will be inflicted on everyone else, especially the Palestinians, will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.' Israel wants all of us to feel guilty, directly or indirectly, for the horrors of the Holocaust; Israel wants us to renounce the most elemental critical judgment and for us to transform ourselves into a docile echo of its will.”
Well, there we are now, guilty and hated, thought the traveller, before we were only hated.
Basel, November 2008
Allan Schapira
PS: Comments are welcome
The traveller left the reunion of dormitory mates, who had shared a “corridor” at the Egmont Kollegium in Copenhagen nearly 40 years before, a little early. The venue was the house of one of the mates and his wife, near Haderslev, in southern Jutland. A lot had been achieved during Saturday: A superb lunch in the garden, an excursion to Christiansfeld with a guided tour through the small town replete with the Herrnhuter Protestant Fraternal Community, and a picnic in the small forest; then the mildly ritualistic dinner, this time with exquisite game and matching wines. Songs, speeches, chatting, good spirits. The outlandish collection of hunting trophies including several dangerous bears, which had been expertly shot and skilfully stuffed, could not be forgotten.
The host and hunter understood the traveller’s desire to leave early and drove him to the railway station. The conversation was gentle, about pensions, getting on with life, places to live, arrangements to make.
The traveller had a little more than an hour to kill, while waiting for a connecting train in Hamburg. Posters told him that an exhibition by the painter Rothko was on in the city. Having often heard the name of this modern painter, but not really knowing his work, he decided that the exhibition would be the best place to spend the time. After first going in the wrong direction and getting too close to people who looked like drug addicts, homeless East Europeans or both, the traveller found the exhibition and saw Rothko’s paintings. Some paintings with large monochrome rectangles or bands, which were not quite monochrome, because the colour in each rectangle was variegated and often much darker, kind of burnt, towards the edges, made a strong impression. They were good, artistic, strong. Yet, the traveller got mildly irritated by two things: There were too many of these good paintings of rectangles: At some point Mark Rothko had started copying himself, living off a formula that worked? The other irritation was more sinister, as the traveller recognized at once. He did not like the fact that Mark Rothko was Jewish: two many of the people who had made it in New York were Jewish. Could others not get a chance?
Back in the railway station, the traveller just managed to get about one kg of German Sunday newspaper and a magazine to enjoy on the onward journey. He was headed for Basel in Switzerland, where he worked, but had made arrangements for stopping over in Bad Arolsen. While he was deeply immersed in an article in die Welt about the decay of musical culture in Germany or some such subject, another traveller came to his reserved seat, insisting it was his. ‘Sorry, I have a reservation for this seat until Kassel, you can see for yourself, but, we have just left Fulda, the train passed Kassel long ago, oh I see, dammit, you are right. With a weary and haughty look, our traveller got up, found an empty seat, descended at the next station, took a train back to Kassel, explained himself to a member of the Zug team, thus avoided paying, and hence arrived in Bad Arolsen at nearly 11 at night. A taxi took him to the reserved hotel, where, surprisingly he was able to have a lonely dinner in a garden restaurant, sitting close to a very civilized wine drinking party.
The following day, he easily found the International Tracing Service for holocaust victims. The young lady with whom he had an appointment was well dressed in a blue jeans suit and a white linen shirt. At first, she gave the traveller printouts that she had already prepared. They were copies of personal registration cards, which referred to train transports for the two persons, who were travelling in 1942 from Prague to “unknown destination” according to some Czech text on the cards, which were otherwise in German. The sympathetic lady explained that the numeric code on the cards meant that the train was headed for the Lublin-Maidanek camp in eastern Poland. ‘But in my family, we have always assumed that they had been taken to Auschwitz, yes, in fact, the Red Cross Centre also assumed that until some years ago, but newer research has sorted out the destination of all the trains (or maybe most of them) deporting people to concentration or extermination camps. The two persons whose fate so interested the traveller were an elderly couple in 1942, though not very elderly. He, whose first name was Simon Majer, was 61 years old and she, Janka, was 53. The German lady and the traveller agreed that in Maidanek they would both have been selected for getting killed as rapidly as possible. Probably by gas, but shooting could not be excluded.
The journey from Prague to Maidanek probably took something like 20-24 hours. It is much longer than Prague – Oswiecim (Auschwitz). The traveller thought that the travel time could be further investigated, but under all circumstances, it would have been a torture. As the journey took place mainly standing in wagons normally used for livestock and no food or drink was likely to be available, it was possible that one or both of the persons mentioned would have died before arriving in Maidanek. According to a post-card (the last) sent by Simon Majer one month before the deportation in 1942 to his son, who then lived in Denmark, where he later begat the traveller, Janka had been in poor health then. The postcard had been shown to the traveller by his mother around 1960 in Copenhagen.
The traveller tried obtaining information on a number of other people, close relatives of Janka and Simon Majer, while in Bad Arolsen, but despite the patient assistance of the staff of the Tracing Service and its well designed search machines, it was not possible to find anything to match those other persons.
Having said good-bye to the helpful people and the quaint little town, the traveller continued his journey to Kassel and on to Basel with a sense of mission accomplished - although, in reality nothing had been accomplished, but nothing more could be done, he felt.
On arrival in Basle, the traveller scanned the two printouts and sent them to others, who were as interested in the information, as he was. A few weeks later, he discussed with one of them, whether such efforts were worthwhile. ‘We must look to the future, yes, but we must also know the past, I think that we as survivors have an obligation to bear witness to what exactly is the truth and not allow it to be abused by those who deny it or by those who abuse it for political agendas, which are not justified. Yes, but one should not become obsessed, there are so many people suffering now and needing help, yes, that is true, but still’.
Some months later, the traveller wrote the above and decided to acknowledge the great writer, José Saramago, whose style he is humbly imitating. Since it is so easy, he then looked up Saramago on Wikipedia and discovered that the Nobel Prize winner had written in 2002 in the respected Spanish newspaper, El Pais:
“ Intoxicated mentally by the messianic dream of a Greater Israel which will finally achieve the expansionist dreams of the most radical Zionism; contaminated by the monstrous and rooted 'certitude' that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God and that, consequently, all the actions of an obsessive, psychological and pathologically exclusivist racism are justified; educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted, or is being inflicted, or will be inflicted on everyone else, especially the Palestinians, will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.' Israel wants all of us to feel guilty, directly or indirectly, for the horrors of the Holocaust; Israel wants us to renounce the most elemental critical judgment and for us to transform ourselves into a docile echo of its will.”
Well, there we are now, guilty and hated, thought the traveller, before we were only hated.
Basel, November 2008
Allan Schapira
PS: Comments are welcome
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Ka’ du li’ røget sild vs. champorado? 0n a strange intersection of Danish and Philippine cultures
K
K
K
Det sm
Det sm
Det sm
Briefly tr
Do you like smoked herring?
Do you like smoked herring with chocol
It t
It t
The point of this silly poetry w
The limit
Try it! In
Malaria 2007: Turning back the clock to march forwards with closed eyes
To be positive
Saturday, 22 December 2007
Allan's duck
This delicious posting had been inadvertently removed during much of 2007. My abject apologies - it shall not happen again
WARNING: THE PROBLEM WITH BLOGS IS THAT THE LATEST POSTING APPEARS ON TOP. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO ENJOY THIS FANTASTIC RECIPE, BEFORE YOU HAVE CAREFULLY READ THE TWO POSTINGS BELOW! LET YOUR CONSCIENCE DECIDE.
AND MERRY CHRISTMAS BY THE WAY!
Allan’s canard à l’orange (
Take a fresh 1.5 kg duck, ideally a cannette, with slightly dark meat, but not a wild duck. Clean it.
Make stuffing:
Slice three shallots, fry to golden in olive oil.
Add 15 small green olives without stones.
Add 200 grammes of clams (Italian vongole). Can be from small can.
Add 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper ½ tsp thyme, ½ tsp rosmary, ½ tsp basilic 2 tsp sage,.
Crumble 5 cream crackers or a sheet ot matzoh into the mixture (as alternative, consider spaetzli, noodles or couscous).
Reduce over low heat. Adjust taste.
Put aside ¼ of this stew for sauce.
To the remainder add segments of 1 orange.
Stuff this into duck, then bind it.
To the ¼ left, add finely sliced zest of ½ orange. Cook gently for ½ hour.
Pass through sieve, keep the liquid for sauce, throw away solid.
Add the liver of the duck
Rub the duck with olive oil with salt and pepper
Heat the oven to 2500C, turn on grill. Place the duck on grid, and grill it on top and bottom (only the time needed for it to brown). Lower temperature to 150. Roast for 30 mins with back up, 60 mins with breast up. Add water regularly to the pan under the grid.
Turn off oven, leave duck inside, remove pan, pour drippings into bowl. Skim the fat off and discard. Add the jus to the sauce. Reduce, adjust taste. You may add a little orange liqueur.
Take duck out, shovel stuffing into warm bowl, carve and serve on a warm dish for example with small potatoes and haricots verts à l’ail.
Acknowledgements: Thanks are due to the Thanksgiving Turkey, the Poulet Marengo and Larousse gastronomique.
Sunday, 7 January 2007
Andrew Spielman in memoriam
Professor Andrew ('Andy') Spielman, Harvard School of Public Health passed away on 20 December 2006. Together with Dr Jackie Cattani and Professor Michael Reich, Andy was my mentor during my year at Harvard in 1987-8. Very quickly I came to like and respect his intellectual curiosity, his strong principles and his warmth and humour.
His perspective on disease control was that of a biologist , a system thinker, concerned with balancing the need to help people and the need to avoid unnecessary damage to biological systems. It was possible, sometimes even necessary, to disagree with him, but his biological perspective remains essential. As much as we can be grateful for the fact that he was able to remain highly active up to 2006, when he was 76, his death is a terrible loss to the world of vector control scientists.
His perspective on disease control was that of a biologist , a system thinker, concerned with balancing the need to help people and the need to avoid unnecessary damage to biological systems. It was possible, sometimes even necessary, to disagree with him, but his biological perspective remains essential. As much as we can be grateful for the fact that he was able to remain highly active up to 2006, when he was 76, his death is a terrible loss to the world of vector control scientists.
Thursday, 21 December 2006
2006 - The year of circumcisions
The purpose of FGM is in general to prevent sexual desire in girls thereby improving marital fidelity. I would consider it one example of the cruelty systematically inflicted by men on women in so many cultural settings. It is akin to burning of witches in Europe, honour killings, burning of widows in
[4] WHO Study Group on female genital mutilation and obstetric outcome (2006). Female genital mutilation and obstetric outcome: WHO collaborative study in six African countries. The Lancet 367, 1835-41
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