The National Left

I came across this fascinating document a few days ago and it has spread like wildfire through the office and amongst friends and the press. A Left wing manifesto that doesn't make me lose my lunch. A critical read for all those who read Hebrew and care about Israel (irrespective of your political orientation). Most points here will be happily endorsed, really, by anyone who proclaims themselves to be Zionists. Great stuff (almost all of it)!

שמאל לאומי

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Meir Shitrit's Biometric Law Is The First Step For A Fascist Israel

I would like to start this post with one Russian in order to (partially) disagree with another:

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."~ Leo Tolstoy, Russian Novelist and Christian Anarchist

Tolstoy is of course correct. This is actually the reasonable reason why the US, when founded, included the part about the right to bear arms. It makes sense to thwart state sponsored tyranny. But what if the state did not only have the monopoly on the use of force, but also had the ultimate ability to link all information to your fingerprint? What if at the click of a button all your personal files ranging from taxes to grades to blood type to voting record were available? This Orwellian vision may yet come into being in Israel where such a law is proposed - a biometric identity card which will use a fingerprint to provide all information about a person.

Since 2004 I have met may smart people in the arena of information technology. One of those people is Igal Pines who has a fantastic blog on Internet marketing. A few months ago I was displeased to see how he wrote a blog post bashing Lenin and praising the merits of capitalism as if they were binary opposites. That's one of my issues with former Soviet Union citizens they find rampant capitalism as the antidote to state socialism. Igal suggested we blog about the biometric card law and I agree - it's an important point. That to me is the confluence of ideas between people on the far right and left from an economic perspective - it's a distain for state control.

Israel is a pretty centralized country as is with its heritage of central economic planning (not to be confused with command economy) and has such has many cumbersome bureaucratic offices. Linking all this data which is truly all engulfing is a nightmare. Funny, I would have never considered Meir Shitrit as a local "big brother".

The Holyland VS. The State of Israel

Seth Godin inspired me the other day. I recently saw his video-cast (Vodcast), titled "the tribes we lead". Seth is hailed as the great prophet of marketing by many, I tend to agree.

In this video he made a correct claim which is backed by many scholars that the world we live in is broken into various tribes. These tribes are formed as a result of the complete overflow of information which enables people to mix and match multiple componenets of their identity thus creating a complex pathwork of interwoven, yet rarely interlinking, intrests, hobbies and prefrences.

The tribes are created when people who share a preference, or a passion, start to interact with each other and begin a discussion, thus forming a community. The community has its "evangelists" who facilitate and maintain the tribe's discussions and growth. Naturally, each tribe has a chief - the original individual who found the raison d'être of the tribe.

The actual flow that Mr. Godin suggests is one in which:

1. An individual finds something in the world worth fixing and decides to lead this cause.


2. He creates a mechanism, manned by various officers to facilitate the project.


3. The mechanism brings together people with the same intrest who interact and form a community.

As fun and as applicible this concept is in the world of marketing I could not help but to think about the political side of things. It seems to me that one could equate the concept of the tribes to that of Hertzel who saw the lack a Jewish homeland as a critical problem. Herzel's efforts evetualy created a mechanism - the Zionist movement and this mechanism created a critical mass forming a community or the modern tribe of Israel. Thus the Jewish homeland problem was solved.

But wait, logically, if Zionism was a movement set out to create a homeland for the Jews what is Zionism now? Zionism or the Zionist movement is a thing of the past, it is an accomplishment that should now, I beleive, be replaced by a new vision. A new leadership must arise to create a new tribe that Israel, as a state, will lead. The tribe of Israel should become a component of a larger tribe - the tribe of the Holy Land.

The land of Israel which is the the holy land of the three monotheistic faiths, should indeed become a community \ tribe which is leae which will nurture tourism, academic research and the study of the three faiths which are unitied, uniquely, in a single geography. To date, Israel is a State which focuses solely on facilitating the needs and intrests of the Jewish population. Revisiting this concept, without surrendering the unique rights Jews require for lack of another Jewish state is in everyone's intrest.

In essence the concept is to rebrand the nation from the Jewish State to The Holy Land (being run, in concert, by The State of Israel) and set in place laws, budgets and plans to make The Land of Israel to The Land for All.

Why China is NOT the new Israel.

A fascinating review of the Israeli high tech industry by TechCrunch yesterday brought about some nasty racist remarks by various readers.

I usually can't be bothered to respond to racial slurs and plain slander but this one really ticked me off. The reasons why I engaged in what is considered to be a futile battle for the good name of Israel is that:

·         The post was not related to politics at all.

·         The people doing the heaviest slander were European.

·         No one wrote a single thing about China but bashed the hell out of Israel.

Just to sum things up, here was the silly tit for tat exchange I had with Dave Roberts, Sophie and Patrick:

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sophie - March 25th, 2009 at 11:49 am PDT

using profanity and attacking people is a sign that you are deeply insecure and you know you can’t stand up and handle the truth.

Down with apartheid israel, down with zionism and racism.

Free Free Palestine

Nicholas Black - March 25th, 2009 at 1:15 pm PDT

Sophie, the definition of Zionism is that Jews have a right for self determination. Surely you wouldn’t deny people their right for self determination based on ethnicity? That is, actually, the definition of Apartheid - creating the distinction of political and human rights based on ethnicity. So you see, in essence, if you advocate an end to racism you should direct your critique at those calling for an end to Zionism. Yes, Sophie, that means that you are actually the racist.

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Patrick - March 25th, 2009 at 2:03 pm PDT

Wake up and smell the coffee. Be a real man and call things for what they really are. Israel is a bloody racist state. Israel is the shame of humanity and of Europe in particular.

Cheers mate!

Nicholas Black - March 25th, 2009 at 2:14 pm PDT

Patrick, actually Europe is the shame of Europe. That is if someone wishes to discuss racism, or coffee for that matter - which you seem fond of. Coffee, for example, is the product of the historical exploitation of Europeans of South America. The bloody and brutal history of Europe leaves a sour taste in the mouths of those who know it.

Israel, is a young state faced with extreme challenges and, considering the neighborhood, is doing a fine job upholding the European theorized code of civilized behavior.

Patrik, mate, why don’t you pop over for a visit and get a taste of a country that isn’t actually built on the crushed bones of slaves, vassals, and crusades? Get a sense of a nation that is struggling to find its way, sometimes warring and sometimes making peace, sometimes failing and at most times succeeding at being one of the most fascinating countries in the world.

L’Chayim mate! (that’s cheers in Hebrew - literally meaning “to life” - Patrick, I suggest you get one).

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dav-e-roberts - March 25th, 2009 at 11:35 am PDT

The State of Israel is home to many smart people, and many great technologies and companies have come out of Israel.

But to somehow use that as a metric of success in the face of the situation vis-a-vis the Gaza Strip, West Bank, the Israel-Lebanon war, etc. is disingenuous at best, and disgusting at worst.

I’m not making excuses for the Arabs, as some of them are responsible for some heinous acts as well, but I would advise the State of Israel, its citizens and cheerleaders not to get into the business of trying to swap camera phone technology for human dignity.

Nicholas Black - March 25th, 2009 at 1:02 pm PDT

Actually you make a good, level headed, argument (refreshing will all the dribble that is being thrown about here).

It’s a tough situation we, in Israel, are in. Fighting both legitimate claims for more self government by the Palestinians and also battling terrorism which stems from pure racist and genocidal roots embedded within the Palestinian national movement is nearly impossible. The result is, as you said, a severe damage to human dignity.

It’s a tragedy - one most of us in Israel hope that the conflict will be resolved sooner rather than later. It just so happens we have the upper hand in this conflict, I shudder to think what things would have looked like if we were the underdog.

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But the most annoying thing is how China which is a dictatorship of the nastiest kind in terms of human right abuses and is, if one wishes to pick a number of local ethnicities claims, an occupying force in Tibet and Xiangin, is not even mentioned once. The scathing anti-semitism underpinning the critique of Israel was too much for me to bear this time. Only Mr. Roberts made a valid claim. My hat is off to him for making a valid, painful, point on the state of the nation which is forced to pick security over human dignity - may we have peace soon. Amen. 

The 3rd Temple Burns

"Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." ~Durkheim

I kept wondering about the holiness of Jerusalem... this is an interesting topic for me on account of 5.5 years of learning urban geography. From what I understand, the Jewish clan was a construct of the desert with Moses's gig on the mountain, while the construct of the State of Israel was an urban success story when David (aka King David) copied the Philistine mode of governance (he knew them well, as he was an army general for them) and launched the nation of Israel into the era of urbanism. With Jerusalem as the capital of his new Kingdom he started expanding its borders and building the First Temple. The Temple was an interesting place and what supposed to house the place in which the actual name of god resided. 

Fast forward 2000 odd years: the Temple is gone and burned over (twice) and the faintest of memories remain of it... Jerusalem is the holiest of places for Jews, but could not be less Israeli (meaning, to me: a place that helps define the national \ religious narrative of creating a geographic narrative to bind the Jewish clan). Israel was woven into existence by a dream, a desire, and a lust: take me home to Jerusalem, to Zion. Once in this home, first as residents in the letter's realm (Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman or British) the modern movement of Zionism took about some rather un-mystical modes of operation to carve out a nation: socialist economic planning, para-military organizations, ethnic cleansing, chit chatting with fascist regimes in pre WWII Europe, etc. 

Jerusalem was the first to fall - the Jewish Quarter in the Old City was taken over. The war of Independence was won and the city fell... the idea died but a nation was born. A schism still exists between the concept of the people of the book, being pure, cultured and moral and the reality of it all. The aspirations of the nation are to be just and strong while we only remain strong and just at times. 

It is said that there is a Jerusalem of above and below... above is the divine, below is the mortal realm. While god may indeed we wafting above the polluted skies of Jerusalem the people below certainly don't seem to notice his \ her presence. Beneath, god's children, irrespective of creed, are busy doing business, eating, shopping, haggling, shouting, pushing, complaining, smiling, hating, listening, not listening, learning, loving and forgetting. 

Walking the streets of the Old City on Friday I kept thinking: the walls, the streets, the temple, churches, shops, signs, all these are by definition constructs clouding our minds. All these cities and ideas, money and bullets, food and clothes, streets and houses, all these things are blinding us. Blinding us from humanity, from simplicity. This cacophonic sensory overload makes one another blind to each other through imagined differences. A reduction in the human attention span through TV, mega cities and marketing overload leads to a death of empathy. The noise of the street which trickles at first and then drowns the mind leads to a death of empathy. 

A friend once told me that the essence of the entire bible's message is: do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. It certainly is a good tagline; however Nike's is much catchier. Modernity 1, humanity 0.