Freedom of the Media was and is an Illusion

 

Freedom of the Media, the Press, was intended to mean that the media was allowed to take position opposing those in power. With President-elect Trump we have a complete rebirth of freedom in Media as the leftist media has been permitted total freedom in denouncing, condemning, delegitimizing and casting overt dispersion in such rapidity that the Maxim machine gun is jealous of their repetition rate against all items Trump. The only threat the American, and its twin of the European media and much of the western and developed world’s media, is facing is that largely, with few notable exception, is pure leftist progressive slant where anything which is not in line with their politically correct, censored, straight-jacket narrow view of the world is denounced as demonic, evil, Nazi-esque and potentially leading to censorship closing down all opposing views of the right wing. The media and their vociferous echo chamber of NGO’s, political advocates, full array of supportive leftist and progressive alternative media, and various leftist lobbyists all standing together making as much racket as the world might stand. That is one of the precious secrets of the Progressive leftists, they are all for one and one for all even more so than the Three Musketeers. This becomes evident in the one area where the left progressives have mastered something that the other end of the political spectrum has yet to even consider, let alone adopt.

 

Watch any demonstration for any leftist Progressive cause and you will soon understand how they get hundreds or more at every demonstration, universal representation. Go to an ecology rally against perhaps coal powered electricity plant in your city and there will be all sorts of ecology demonstrators including anti-nuclear power, pro-wind power, save the whales, clean our rivers, save the oceans, clean air and any other ecology cause imaginable. But that is not all. There will likely be others there who support other causes and are not particularly worked up about the ecology of the Earth and more concerned with the pro-choice, anti-death penalty, anti-racism, and even pro-Palestinian or BDS or other anti-Zionist, anti-Israel movements all there for one reason, the leftist you scratch my cause I’ll scratch your cause. Often at a demonstration for some cause there will be protest signs for other causes within the demonstration because if you protest one leftist Progressive cause, you are there representing all leftist progressive causes. And the mainstream will give favorable coverage with inflated numbers of protesters and enthusiasm and will take their pictures selectively attempting to only get the right standards despite others also on prominent display. Many will accuse me and ask how it is I know this. Well, once upon a time many years ago I was one of those liberals back when being a liberal meant keep the government out of my life, respect for all people, equality for all, live and let live, and, believe it or not, gun rights was not an automatic exclusion from the club. To be honest, the one cause which had tepid support was gun rights, but at least in those days it was not a cause which caused one to be disassociate and shunned.

 

Back then one went to every protest just as is the means today. There were people who would pay people to attend protests which were considered vital. These were often the protests against particular politicians or counter rallies to out shadow any right wing causes by having greater numbers at the counter rally thus making the coverage all about the liberal progressive cause which opposed the scheduled protest. Often the counter protest did not have any license or permit and actually be technically illegal but they were seldom forced to disperse and were given much freedom. The exception were the anti-war demonstrations which the government took a dim view and would use violent force to break up such demonstrations. This was back in the late 1960s and into the 1970s and with the times the position of the establishment changed as the left took command during the Administration and Presidency of Jimmy Carter. That was a turning point as from that point on the left progressive tours de force began a simple tactic, the just ignore everything between progressive majorities and just pick up right where the last front left off. This made for a force which became all but an inevitability which could never be opposed by anything the conservatives could establish.

 

This became evident when President Jimmy Carter simply picked up where President Lyndon Baines Johnson left off with the Great Society, affirmative action, wealth redistribution, ecology restrictions on industry through emissions and every other leftist progressive cause. Then there was a break for a dozen years of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Presidencies. Then came President William Jefferson Clinton who continued expanding the progressive cause and then came another Republican, President George W. Bush, who was not so much a counter to the progressive causes than a slightly different approach in establishing big government programs which the “No Child Left Behind” program. This brought on the yet another rendition of ‘new math,’ ‘full word recognition’ and stressing minority contributions from the past replacing history with little mention of any contributions from white males and especially Judeo-Christian ethics and instead an anti-ethical education which removed any standard history of the United States and other Western histories which when mentioned it received condemnations of how it was exclusive not as meaning something exemplary but rather as racist, prejudiced and intolerant. Any traditional history was belittled and condemned by using modern day morality and equal rights viewpoints making everything from the past appear hateful and vengeful being racist, prejudiced and xenophobic. Making normative history where Christian, white male formed history such as the Founding Fathers were cast as hateful slave owners and thus not ethical or acceptable because such was unacceptable in these modern times and the European greats such as Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Isaac Newton, Galileo and others were also intolerant, supremacist, racist, sexist and likely homophobic or full of other forms of hateful white supremacist views which would be condemned in today’s world. This version of history left much of traditional history untaught or presented as something to be rejected and spurned as horrible examples of a hateful past.

 

 

Some of such views are being presented in the media where past events are presented under a modern viewpoint and leftist microscope where anything which was acceptable back in history becomes unacceptable and regrettable as it fails to measure up to the modern ethos and leftist yardstick which was unheard of and did not exist when the history occurred. This method was designed and makes children ashamed of their past history and thus leaves them unattached to their past and because of their being separated and unanchored their views can be molded in such a manner as to overturn their ethics and allows them to be made to accept anything as one who has no past can be given any defined future. This is an actual method for disconnecting children from their parents, their history, their religious affiliations and anything which might define them as a continuation of their actual society and are instead given an entire redefined ethos which has nothing connected to their history and disconnecting them from parents and everything which would allow for a continuation of history and a continuation of the historic societal models. This is reinforced by the mainstream media which works using the identical redefined ethical framework leaving a youth which when they take the reins of power, they will start a society completely detached from past realities and all of history. The casting of all former history as evil and ruinous and without any worth was beautifully exemplified by President Obama when he returned the bust of Sir Winston Churchill as he refused to retain the visage of a colonialist, racist, evil, hateful individual and not the man who saved the world from Nazi Germany’s world conquest. This is indicative of the new morality that the mainstream media and education which are both completely under the thumb of the progressive, leftist rewriters of all history and religious anchors in order to create a brave new world where for all intents and purposes they could teach children that 2 + 2 = 5 as truth and the children would have no anchoring to know it was a lie. Thus is the prospect for the future in Europe, the United States and the remainder of western society, culture and the developed world should it remain under the sway of the progressive leftists whose remaking of society has actually been in progress under even the ‘conservative’ politicians since Theodore Roosevelt and shifted into high gear by Woodrow Wilson and accelerated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (yes, a relative of Theodore) and moved along even faster by Lyndon Banes Johnson and the line held by Jimmy Carter and slight advancement by William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush and then taken airborne and breaking virtually every barrier by Barack Hussein Obama with the future remaining to be seen. The main reason for the apoplectic fits and near convulsive contortions by progressive leftists over the election of Donald Trump is they fear those who hold their religion as holy, their ethics as cemented in a tradition worth preservation, their history as ethical and who desire moderation in progress where changes are evaluated over time, instead of great leaps being taken blindly without looking back and burning all the bridges and even the castles and fields behind them assuring there is no chance of retrieving any morsel from our collective past as they are ashamed of their Judeo-Christian history despite it having been the basis for many positive developments.

 

They refuse to credit the Judeo-Christian ethics with the end of slavery instead blaming it for slavery, bringing about the Renaissance instead dwelling instead on earlier Church anti-science standings ignoring the truth that things changed and the fact that many of those precious progressive ideas they hold as sacred have their roots in the Judeo-Christian ethos that people are all equal in the eyes of Hashem and instead teach that religion was all about exalting white, male Christian superiority and all the evils which can be appropriated to such a viewpoint. The fact that history has been a progression of events and evolutions caused often by the very past which originally opposed change but with time softened and became champions of the progressive changes in society. The reason for the new view demonizing the past of the youths’ parents and ancestors and pressing that all their views which are actually the logical result of the Judeo-Christian ethics, they want to disposes the past and make the youth divorce their history and thus be pliable and moldable into whatever the latest untested theories for society the progressives can invent. Where this will lead is to an entire unanchored generation which will fall before any anchored group which has a strong history and religious anchoring who are willing to fight for their beliefs. These types will rule the day simply because, as the old adage goes by G.K. Chesterton (we realize that anything old, especially adages, is unacceptable and makes any argument unacceptable but tough), “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” This probably states why the progressives work so hard to disconnect the youth from their past.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

Let’s Play “Can We Find a Trump to Trump This?”

 

The media coverage of items dragged from the depths of Donald Trump’s past would be a whole lot more believable had they treated anything from the Clinton’s pasts or presents with equal severity and critical research. So they have found another outrageous thing Donald Trump said and the Republican Party mainstays are all a twitter, on Twitter and Facebook, castigating their presumed candidate because they actually have moral compasses and core values instead of the win at any cost and damn the rules because the media will protect us and pooh-pooh any charge from our past and present because the political reality in the United States is the media has become the publicist and attack dog of the Democrat Party. Notice the amount of time the media spent on the item of the second about how the Clintons used the Democrat Central Committee to assist them in destroying the campaign and hopes of Bernie Sanders. If you blinked or coughed you missed that coverage entirely. Or how Hillary literally laughed in the faces of the Benghazi Committee and the members of Congress taking the deaths of four Americans including an Ambassador and two brave men who gave their every last breath trying to protect the staff and the Ambassador while President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were doing everything in their power to help the whole affair disappear in a blizzard of misinformation and commanding relief efforts to stand down so as not to make a federal case of protecting these people. Those two men held off the entire attacking terror force we now know for eight long hours always checking the skies for help which never came. They sent out radio plea after radio plea describing their situation and giving exact coordinates of the mortar placements which were bombarding their position. All that President Obama and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were doing was damage control and minimizing any hope these men had that their country’s leadership actually cared enough to send in the Marines, literally. How silly and ridiculous their efforts must have appeared to the exact people charged with presumably tearing down nations to bring them to safety must have appeared as they put out one fire after another which were being lighted to send hope and tell these men and their protected that help was on the way. Assisting forces were boarding helicopters and warming up fighter jets only to be commanded by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to power down their efforts because these people were not worth risking their careers at such a crucial stage in the reelection campaign of President Obama and the future election, or is it supposed to be coronation, of President Hillary. That is what mattered then and that is what matters now, the placement of Hillary upon her throne.

 

Where are the investigations into the Clinton Foundation or has all suspicions now been squelched and another fire put out just as all those, and this was their terminology, “Bimbo Explosions” were handled all those years as Willian Jefferson Clinton was the rising star of the Democrat Party from Little Rock and these continued “Bimbo Explosions” while he was President wagging his finger at the camera and the American People claiming, “I did not have sex with that woman Miss Lewinski.” Notice how such womanizing and actual sexual escapades are being silenced as if Hillary never assisted these cover-ups and the entire media machine has silenced all mention of anything untoward from the Clinton Sex Machine which was Bill Clinton’s driving force while climbing and maintaining his political stardom. The media is downplaying the potential for mischief which will present itself with Bill Clinton back in the White House as First Husband where he will be sent to travel the globe and rub elbows and whatnot with the wives of other nation’s Presidents and Prime Ministers. Is this the picture we want for the United States?

 

 

We are being treated to every lewd and unsolicited glance from the past of a man who never expected to actually be running for President of the United States and did not have handlers his entire life scripting his way around every failing and misspeak as many in the political class have had the luxury of for these past fifty to sixty years. While Hillary resided in the hallowed halls of the political game Donald was working in the real world and actually had real world failings and missteps which remained unsanitized making for such fine targets for today’s media. The media has on record the entire playlist of past Donaldisms right next to the “Do not ever allow see the light of day” playlist of Clintonisms. Imagine yourself thrust into the limelight having your entire past and that of anyone who was close such as a wife, husband, college roommate or just about anyone else and every prank from summer camp, as we’re sure if Donald Trump ever assisted in short-sheeting a counselor’s bunk we will hear of this as the ultimate in horrific behavior two days before the election on Sunday, November 6 as the lead in every Sunday newsprint. The story will be retold on all the talk shows and will lead with nothing else being covered with interviews with the traumatized counselor who is needless to say traumatized by this coverage out of the blue and not because of post-traumatic stress disorder from the short-sheeting. Nor has he been likely to have sought, as might be claimed, psychiatric help to get past this horrific experience brought on by young Donald who has obviously never matured from that day forward. This is the typical type of story we are being treated to as if they have any bearing on how Donald Trump will serve as President while how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acted in that service to the country is inconsequential as it has no bearing on how she will act as President. Tell me how that makes any sense.

 

There has been one other item which has bothered us since the very first primary where Donald Trump won so handily against some extremely stiff competition and how every word he uttered in a debate were the only quotes the media ever played unless there was a complete failure by one of the other candidates. Did anyone notice how Donald Trump was considered a serious candidate and one capable of leading the campaign of one of the major political parties in the United States. The media was his campaign and they did their part to get him the nomination right before they turned on him like a rabid dog might one morning turn on its owner seemingly for no reason. The difference is there was a reason and that is the media has their dog in this race. Somehow Donald Trump was the media’s favorite and there was a reason. Any legitimate Republican even to include Ted Cruz, the media’s backup for Donald, would have cleaned Hillary Clinton’s clock in this election and the political world knows this. It had become apparent that Donald Trump is not only running against the Democrat Party, the Clinton machine, both Bill and Hillary Clinton and the media but also the Republican Party as well. The Republicans have yet to put up even the tiniest squeal of protest against the treatment and have actually piled and heaped shame upon Donald themselves and are now heading for the exits in a well-rehearsed fire drill making Donald persona non grata even in his own party and have made it appear even his running mate will have nothing to do with him after this well held secret was waiting in the wings to be used at this juncture. The Republican Party knew this was coming as each and every one who was questioned as the story was breaking or even before it broke so that these reactions of Republican elites could be aired with the story were ready and willing to throw Donald Trump under the bus. One need ask why?

 

The Republican Party has their candidate for the Presidency and she is Hillary Clinton. That is correct, both major parties are running Hillary Clinton for President and her path to the White House was supposed to be a cleared path with the least presentable and least probable candidate being chosen by the Republicans and then denigrated and destroyed by the same Republican Party such that Hillary would have her deserved and rightful coronation. This is the dirty little not-so-secret secret of this entire campaign from both parties. Was there any Republican who was being seriously considered potentially a threat to a Hillary Clinton victory? Jeb Bush with all his millions would have walked off with the election but he was destroyed before he got started. He was likely promised by the Democrats to be given his turn after Hillary Clinton serves her eight years and he will get four. Who were the front runners from the start? Remember? There was Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and John Kasich. All the stars were eliminated by the media one-by-one and the Republican Party never cried foul and simple whimpered along in tacit agreement with the decimation of their candidate field leaving only candidates Hillary might be capable of defeating. Even with this field they had to go to a Donald Trump candidacy to even be able to pretend Hillary was the better choice. There wasn’t a bigger clown to ridicule than Donald Trump but something went awry. What was that they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? Well, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men are trying to put Humpty together again but Hillary keeps falling off her perch and cracking into a million pieces before our eyes and it is not news. Her excuses lead like she was suffering from pneumonia which was why she fainted at the 911 rally and had to be slid away from all coverage, as required to keep the lie going, into a van without escort or Secret Service protections and media circus one would expect. Then this weak and eviscerated pneumonia victim then turned up escaping her minders waving to all who passed by from Chelsea’s New York apartment chipper as the first day of spring. Then there was her bright and shiny perky Hillary at the first debate and we are anticipating an equally medicated and scripted Hillary with the little bug in her ear feeding her every word and every thought guiding her along while Donald Trump is left to his own devices completely abandoned by all. Trump should place a sign over his campaign headquarters stating, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” He was cherry picked as the only person Hillary Clinton could easily beat six ways come November 8, Election Day and she has proven unable to even manage this. What would have been her chances against any competent candidate? None, negligible and without a doubt her rise would have been an impossible Herculean task. Alas, poor Sisyphus is going to have a new task in Hades. Sisyphus will be tasked with pushing Hillary Clinton up the hill to a microphone only to have her tumble back to the bottom every time.

 

Sisyphus Pushing Hillary Up the Hill

 

Sisyphus may as well represent the media, the Democrat Party, the Republican Party, talking heads from Sunday Morning News shows, the nightly news anchors, etc. Actually, to parse a phrase, “Never was so much owed by so few to so many,” can refer to Bill and Hillary who owe a debt for her successes and covering her many failures in deed and character to the entirety of the political and media empires which have congealed around protecting her path to the White House. What is so surprising is that it will take a landslide victory by such a great margin to get past the fixes already in place in the crucial states to make President Hillary a certainty. Donald Trump is not going to need the undecided battleground states as those are fixed where such opportunity presents; such as Philadelphia having 125% turnout with 98% voting for the Democrat and other noted irregularities such as Chicago in all too many elections. Trump is going to need to win in places where the powers that be do not expect him to even have a snowball’s chance in Death Valley on an August afternoon such as taking New York or California, something we have believed he might be able to pull off and they put some early efforts in place in both these states, or any other solid Democrat stronghold. Perhaps he can take Illinois or Minnesota or Maine or anywhere in New England or the great northwest of Oregon (OK, no hope in Oregon) and Washington (not much better then Oregon) and if he takes any of these there will be no amount of cheating or vote buying or rigging that will prevent his landslide. If Pennsylvania and New York go to Trump early in the reporting as the polls close, then the gig is up and Hillary is finished. That is the reality and they know this which is why Donald Trump will be made into the most hideous monster of a human being since Idi Amin Dada. The torrents of the media are on the verge of demon Trump all the time. Expect even comedy and other venues of shows on television to start with anti-Trump campaign assistance. We can expect the late night shows to begin blasting away at the latest “Did you hear this scandalous item from Trump’s past?” They will talk about things he presumably did in grade school as if he did them yesterday in Times Square. Expect people from Trump’s past, real and imaginary, to be presented as witnesses to his character, or lack thereof, and a string, a procession coming to the microphone given their fifteen seconds of fame where all they need do is say, “I’m Joe Six Pack and Donald Trump is an evil monster who left me without hope or any future when he destroyed my car, house, dreams, relations with Marilyn Monroe or whatever fiasco of a life tragedy they can claim and the public will be expected to realize, oh my gosh, how could I ever vote for such a mean and evil person while Hillary Clinton will remain wrapped in her cocoon protected from prodding or other harms. No words about Benghazi, old news; or the e-mails, not prosecutable; or pay to play, no proven quid pro quo; or her losing of the Rose Law Firm tax files until the statute of limitations was passed and then they were in a white house clothes closet found by the cleaning crew, old news; or her presumed ill health, simply pneumonia and what a miracle recovery, isn’t she wonderful; her lying to Congress and to the relatives of the dead about Benghazi, not Benghazi again, can’t you leave that old news alone; cleaned server hard drive, really want to try that again; and any wrongdoing by the Clintons is either old news, been there-done that, that again, we tired of hearing about that, doesn’t mean anything, “never happened, OK, happened but doesn’t matter, OK matters but you sure it was Hillary, that again?”

 

This election is not about Donald Trump or anything he ever did as anything Trump has done did not result in dead bodies, dead United States Ambassador and two former Navy Seals left hanging to die, lies and cover-ups of felonies, risking and compromising United States top secret information, selling lies to Congress and the American people, and a trail of continuous scandals and cover-ups longer and deeper than anything, oh wait, here’s a grandmother who was denied a visit by her great-grandchildren because Trump had to lead a parade. Ridiculous, yes, but also an example in jestful hyperextension of reality not that far stretched. And we have yet to get into the lies and mischaracterization of Hillary’s proven positions on numerous foreign policy and international relations. A simple pair of examples would be her being capable of handling Vladimir (the Invader) Putin better than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s presumed love for Israel against Donald Trump the presumed anti-Semite whose daughter is an Orthodox practicing Jew and whose every child is married to or dating a religious and/or Zionist Jew while Chelsea also married a Jew who is a Democrat leftist progressive whose parents were members of Congress and his father later served time in federal prison for fraud, is a wealthy hedge fund manager and alumnus of Goldman Sachs thus bigtime Wall Street connection, but to his credit Marc Mezvinsky has an upbringing and adulthood which were shaped by a strong Jewish background amid all the politics according to media reports. Trump’s eldest daughter actually converted, Chelsea has not and probably never will convert thus her children will not be Jewish by religious law while Ivanka Trump will raise their children as true and honest Jews by Halacha. This Jewish connection to the potential next Presidential family is unprecedented in American and Jewish history with few Jews outside of Israel ever being so close to the seat of power. Benjamin Disraeli as the Victorian Prime Minister of Britain being probably the most famous exception may soon have some competition but that remains to be seen. Remember that much of the Trump controversies are manufactured from deeds of a man outside of politics and on the wrong side of the media and both parties’ elites and was chosen to be the sacrificial lamb at the coronation of Hillary Clinton, who has been unofficially but practically cleansed of all her and her husband’s wrongdoings by a complicit media and political elites, and they have now realized they chose a wolf from amongst the sheep.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Blessings We Have Found in Israel

 

Israel gets some bad public relations if one depends on the news, editorials, talk radio and just about any mass media, even movies and other entertainment. Living in Israel very quickly dispels all the lies. Are there a few choice people who might make one take a less than superb view, but such are rare and even they warm with time. Needless to say, not knowing or speaking the language causes some difficulties but there is almost always somebody there to lend a translating hand. There was the time we were at a McDonalds and the woman at the counter spoke no English and two what had to be young High School age girls came in and realizing the communication problem immediately became our translators without being asked. Generally there are those who willingly offer to give directions to whatever place you need to find in ten minutes to make the appointment and it is your first time in the city and you got off the bus where you thought was the closest stop. That time we only missed by one or two stops and had to walk about a mile or so, you get used to walking in Israel because so much living is city center style European life, an initial system shock after life in the outer suburbs in the United States.

 

Our friends, acquaintances and relatives are quite surprised when we relate the ease and general atmosphere in Israel. When we tell them that we have found Israel more accommodating and generally having a softer and more easy and comforting nature they tend to express great surprise. One might expect that in Israel life would have an edge on it with the constant threats from virtually any direction and the added unpleasant surprise with the Iranian nuclear threat and President Obama and his team’s animosities and threats thrown at Israel but they would be quite wrong. Probably the best description we could give as a true barometer of Israel and Israelis would be to take everything ever attributed to Israel and her people by the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Commission or virtually any other United Nations agency etcetera and take it all and place the initials of the United Nations in front of them but in small letters and then read the entirety as one word. An easy example would be if some United Nations commission claimed Israelis harbored a genocidal hatred then all one need do is take the two words and place the letter un in front giving you ungenocidal and unhatred and you would produce an honest appraisal. Sure it would take ignoring your spellcheck and do some translations where ungenocidal would become accepting of others people who are different and unhatred would become lovers making the entire accusation translate into accepting and caring for peoples who differ from Jews and accepting, caring and considerate of people who are of any other stereotypical, racial, religious or nationality different from Israeli or Jewish. A closer inspection of Israeli actions around the world will better exemplify this example.

 

When Haiti was struck by that devastating earthquake, the Israelis were amongst the first to have responders on the ground evaluating any special needs. Israel had the first field hospital which was equipped with X-ray equipment, a gynecological unit, a neonatal unit, burn center, surgical rooms, prosthetics and physical therapy, emergency room, and virtually every department and specialists which was on the ground and set up within six days of the earthquake. This hospital remained on the ground even after the search and rescue units had stood down. Israel also opened clinics in areas where urgent care not requiring the abilities of a full hospital were present and when the Israelis left Haiti a number of these clinics remained completely equipped with diagnostic, monitoring and other equipment and Israel had trained people in the area such as orphanage, school or other personnel who would be capable of offering care after the Israelis had left.

 

When Typhoon Haiyan spread destruction throughout much of the Philippines, Israel arrived with an one-hundred-forty-eight person team, including search, rescue and medical services and a fully functioning field hospital with one-hundred tons of aid. Making rescue and aid assistance even more difficult was when the typhoon struck, the region was still reeling from the Bohol earthquake in October before. One of the more interesting reports on the Israeli presence at the time was on television news where an on the scenes reporter had been directed to a small village not on one of the main Islands by the Philippine government when she requested assistance in reaching the “most remote village” to report on how they were coping with the aftermath of the storm. Imagine her surprise to find a clinic operated by Israelis already set up and operating while training the local villagers on how to treat people for emergency aid and familiarizing them with the equipment which the Israelis would leave behind as well as the clinic itself with one Israeli aid worker to remain behind and work for the next six months or so with the villagers to assure that they have received whatever training might arise.

 

When Nepal recently had their massive earthquake, once again Israel was amongst the first to respond and the operation was much like the one in Haiti with one exception which was remarkable; Israel took care to the most remote of places, some of which had rarely if ever seen support even from the Nepalese government where Israel set up satellite care units often referred to as clinic in a backpack, though we would hate to have to carry such a backpack, they are quite heavy (pictured below). These remote aid clinics provided urgent and critical care close to the, and often on the, mountain slopes treating climbers and vacation goers as well as native Nepalese citizens. They also operated as a remote triage for when victims were stabilized and given what treatment was available at the clinic and once the patients were stabilized for transport having them taken to the main Israeli or other field hospital.

 

 

The Israeli and Nepalese medical staff who operated the IsraAID mobile clinic in the village of Tar, ten hours northeast of Kathmandu. (Photo credit: Melanie Lidman/Times of Israel)

 

 

Israel has sent aid groups to other areas struck by natural calamities with teams having gone to Japan after their earthquake and tsunami disaster, Myanmar after the tsunami, Turkey after they suffered an earthquake and offered assistance to the United States after hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans and destroyed entire fishing towns along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and reportedly one of a very remote few to offer assistance to the United States. When one considers the Save a Child’s Heart program and how it saves children of all ages who have debilitating if not life-threatening heart problems as well as setting up entire departments in hospitals around the world and training their staff and physicians on how to diagnose and treat these children including training the heart surgeons on how to perform these sensitive and vital surgeries, Israel leaves all the equipment the staff was trained on with the hospital.

 

And the Israelis you meet, see, work with and just generally run across are some of the most patient people and really do try to help in their own manner. They may sometimes have difficulty in expressing things in English but many are actually happy and anxious to use their English and respond well when one states the words in the correct syntax as that is important to them. Sentence structure in Hebrew is different than in English and thus literal word for word translations quite often makes for what at first one takes as Yoda speak from Star Wars, perhaps it was direct translation of Hebrew to English that was the basic transference used to make Yoda syntax. Our Hebrew is embarrassingly inadequate to even make a scheduled appointment and get the day of the week correct not to mention the time as some places use a twenty-four hour clock which reminds all of military times.

 

Then there is a tight knit group of what are referred to as Anglos, basically English speakers, and we have events, trips, sightseeing, Torah, Talmud and Bible classes for men and women and we have found our level of social activities is vastly more active and on a level of friendliness equal to our best of times and friends back in the United States. Another thing which leads to such is that Israel is a rather small nation, approximately the size of New Jersey, though that is misleading as the southern two-fifths, or forty-percent, of Israel is made up of the Negev Desert which is rather sparsely populated. Where New Jersey has a population of nine-million, Israel’s population is just over eight-million. Of course there are some groups who pretty much stick to their own group of like-minded and religious viewpoints such as the Haredi. In much of Israel where there is a mix of Arab and Jewish populations there is no evident difference in the treatment and the interactions are natural and as normal as humanly possible. In the area we reside there are Arab and Muslim stores and employees in larger stores or other places of employment are seamless as to their fitting into the society as a whole. At the regional hospital there are Muslim and Arab nurses, physicians, technicians and all positions and everything functions, as we said, seamlessly. The street signs are all written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English with some towns sporting French or Spanish or Russian, though we have yet to see one which had more than four languages and usually just the three required languages. What is always amusing is when a store has its name actually an English name but the letters on their sign is in Hebrew. What gets confusing is that when you read some of these signs you try to think what the prefixes and suffixes are as Hebrew has many words result only in a letter prefix or suffix. Some examples of prefixes are the ‘v’ which means ‘and’ along with an ‘h’ which means ‘the’ while the suffixes often give one the gender of the word as well as if it is singular or plural or includes the speaker or listener in the plural group and so on. Over half of learning Hebrew are the prefixes and the gender and singular versus plural of the words. Someday we will get a reliable translation program for our phones, or should we call them what the phones have become, life assistants and general applications from pictures to recordings, getting e-mail, surf the Web, record our every move and change of mood on Facebook, well, not quite, and most important movie or still camera and recorder.

 

Basically, virtually everything UNcomplimentary about Israel are UNtrue. Contrary to popular belief they are not contrarians. Israelis are like all peoples, there are the great, the good and the we wish they were nicer types. Many fall all over themselves attempting to make our lives as stress free as possible which had to be stressing on them. Of course it might be that as the ancient Hebrew scholars made a point of hammering into our stories and writings, people will only treat you as well as you treat them and life can be like a mirror to one’s soul which is revealed by ones actions when it appears nobody is watching, because, as we are taught in Judaism and is likely taught though with a slight difference, there is always somebody watching us from on High and nothing escapes that view as our innermost thoughts to our most expressed emotions. We can also count that such observations tell whether we’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Still, there is something else which permeates through the society at large. There is an air of optimism and hopefulness. You feel a vigor for living life and finding meanings where other places simply ignore and accept things as is. In Israel there is this striving to be better as a people and as individuals. There is also a level of acceptance which makes one more comfortable simply being themselves as all will be just fine in the end. There are more young children than we were used to in the United States. This too adds to the optimism as a society with declining populations is what is destroying Europe right before our eyes. They are dancing their last dance in Europe and if things continue as has been the scenario we in Israel will become all the more isolated and an Island of freedom and democracy in a sea of misfortune. There is still hope for Europe but only if they turn their ship of state around and rediscover what gave them the impetus to live life to the fullest and explore the world, that spark of life which made passing their ideas and ideals on to the next generation, something difficult to do when there are so few children born to the indigenous Europeans. Israel will only grow stronger as the Jews of Europe make their final decision and that plague may soon prove to be a prophesy for the United States though that need not be their future written in stone. The United States has a far better opportunity to reverse the slipping trend before the slope becomes too steep and wet for any traction and down becomes the only direction. We are both glad we have come to Israel and Israel has proven to be a wellspring of optimism and life, a future of light and enlightenment, more than a completion as it is an opportunity to grow with such splendor and a kaleidoscope of choices each colored so vividly and vibrant. It is really hope eternal or as close as we have seen on Earth. It is great to be at home, the home which was destined and a good, no, great home it is and will grow from there. Needless to say, but we do not expect the United Nations to understand as they are the people of ‘UN’ and that sums them up in total.

 

Beyond the Cusp