mrs Kobrin's Heder class

Lotteries and Gambling

When I answered the ring on the phone, just as I was rushing to pick up my heater, which I'd been informed was ready to be collected after repair, an attractive woman's voice resonated in my ear, asking me to buy a lottery ticket for a very good cause.

I realized that I had to make a choice; either to explain why I'm against lotteries or any sort of gambling or to fetch my heater.

It's pretty cold in Jerusalem these days so I went to fetch my heater and asked the lady to visit my blog and read why I object to buying lottery tickets or gambling of any sort.

Winning a fortune of money in return for very small outlay is such an exiting prospect that one can't blame people for buying lottery tickets or participating in other forms of gambling.

They are so excited in fact that they don't notice that they are being robbed. They are in fact being robbed firstly by the organisers of the lottery and secondly by the winners.

This makes the winner a thief who steals from many people, all the people who lost the gamble.

The winner's intention that the others should lose makes him a thief.

So at one and the same time someone who purchases a lottery ticket is both getting robbed and being a thief.

I don't want either. I'm all for getting lots of money but I'm against taking it from others without giving anything in return.

Mouse trap

I assume that others read about this sensational new Israeli invention, a trap for revealing terroristss, drug traffickers and other noxious creatures, using mice.

The article appears in Haaretz newspaper:

The mice are trained to sniff out explosives or drugs. Then they're put in a box that looks like a metal detector. When someone carrying drugs or explosives walks past the mice run to the next compartment, which has clean air. (See picture), a light flashes.

Eran Lambroso, an ex-navy officer, one of the developers, told about a successful test that at Azrieli shopping mall.

The system is now being adapted to reveal biological signs of cancer cells.
report by Dudi Goldman. Infographics: Ron Dror.

Surprise in Egypt

All the experts are praising the sudden awakening of the masses in Egypt and the kindly treatment they're getting from the suddenly kindly soldiers of the Egyptian army.

If this is true it means that the Egyptian people have changed from being a nation with a high rate of illiteracy and consequent ignorance to being a nation with a large percentage of people who are well educated and have the intelligence, willingness, courage and freedom to express their own opinion.

If this change has taken place it must have been over quite a long time and must have been very quiet untill now.

It takes a long time, usually hundreds of years, for non thinking mass of uneducated to become educated and to value the importance of education and freedom.

The revolution in education of the masses must have been in the making for many a year in Egypt and the peaceful demonstrations we're witnessing now must be just climax of the deep rooted, gradual change that has been going on in Egypt.

If this is true then Mubarak has been a wonderful leader for Egypt; he's raised the mass of unthinking, uneducated, simple, good people of Egypt to a high level of being able to think for themselves.

There is a possibility that this is true. After all is said and done people do change their nature. It's rare but it does happen. Rarer still is for a whole nation to change its nature but even that is possible.

One shouldn't be pessimistic. After all aren't we working towards change? Wasn't the American ideal that Middle East should change from being ruled by tyrants to being ruled democratically like the USA itself? So isn't this the dream come true?

For the answer to these questions to be in the affirmative Egypt would have to fulfill the main condition of freedom, namely, there'd have to be freedom of speech.

I'm sceptical that Egypt has truly achieved freedom simply because we here in Israel didn't hear anything about life in Egypt neither did any Egyptian visit Israel (excepiting Omar Suleiman, the head of security who might be the new president of Egypt).

Egyptians didn't suddenly become a nation of free, independent thinking people.

This certainly doesn't mean that change hasn't taken place. It has but it's not the kind that changes the nature of the country, such as the change from slavery to freedom.

I love looking at pictures in the news of the happy faces of the Egyptian demonstrators one  It really warms my heart to see how happy they are.

They really think that their demonstration has brought them a better life and more freedom. I even find articles written by experts on the Middle East from the Dayan Institute of the Tel Aviv University about how the rebellion was lead by the director of Google in Egypt.

Now that is really something; the Egyptians are using computers and sending messages on Twitter and Facebook. I'm sure that many are doing this and that these messages have played a significant role in keeping the demonstration going but I think the experts are exaggerating just a little.

It's wonderful to see that even slaves can learn to use the internet. It is definitely a sign of progress and it's very exciting. Perhaps they really will make progress towards freedom and independent thought.

I don't think for a moment that Mubarak instigated this demonstration so that he could resign and give the Egyptian people a feeling of satisfcation that they threw him out.

The demonstration was genuine. But I can't stop thinking Mubarak used it very skilfully and demonstrated his achievement in raising the Egyptian Nation, to a new level of independence, however slight the rise was.

This is Mubarak's way of saying goodbye to the Egyptian people and handing them over to another dictator posing as a kind, beneficial, father of the nation kind of figure as Mubarak was.

The rising cost of water

Water never was a plentiful comodity in the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey. Practically every time the Children needed a drink of water in the wilderness God had to make a miracle.

Although today the rich just pay up and happily drink down without a care the poor still need miracles.

This isn't just the bad luck of the poor and the good luck of the rich.

This disgusting situation is actually caused by the rich and water costs rise as the number of rich people in Israel rise. The rich are actually taking from the poor to get richer.

Let me explain with two examples I'm aware of, I'm sure there are many more:

1) 25 million cubic meters of good sweet water is needed for the annual production of Potash. This water is provided by 32 wells in the Dead Sea area.

To produce one ton of potash about five cubic meters of water is required. Ala’a Omari & Jamal Amira, The Arab Potash Company, Jordan

Using agricultural run-off "subsurface drainage water" for Potash Production.

Latest potash production figures http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?country=il&product=potash&graph=production

2) Water that used to flow into the Sea of Galillee is trapped in dams on the Golan Heights.

These are only two examples where the country's water supply is depleted by rich consumers, causing a shortage and the cost to rise.

In other words the entire population of Israel is subsidising the production of Potash from the Dead Sea and agriculture on the Golan Heights and I guess many other consumers I and the average citizen knows nothing about but I'm sure that many of my readers do.

These consumers must pay and the government must stop milking us so that they can make bigger profits.

Dead Sea Surprises

Yesterday I attended a tourguides refresher.

I got refreshed alright, actually shaken up by what I saw and learned about the industrial ventures of Israel Chemicals in the production, really mining, of phosphate and potash in the Negev Desert in the Rotem Plain, near the outlet from the Little Crater (Mahtesh Katan) and in the southern basin of the Dead Sea.

Phosphate and potash is so valuable, apparantly that it's worth tearing up mountains and moving an entire lake to extract.

Until yesterday I never knew how vast this operation is and how drastically the scenery is being altered by it.

For example, had the lake not been created by Israel Chemicals all the area south of Massada would, by now, have been dry land. Now there is a lake about 4 km long and 2 km wide with about 40 hotels, crowded with vacationers and health resorts on its shores.

The main reason for creating the lake was to extract potash and other chemicals, so tourism is only a secondary benifit of the project.

The water must be pumped because the elevation of the lake is about 30 mts higher than the Dead Sea.

This process adds about 20cm of surface area to the lake each year. Eventually, perhaps only in 5 years time the water will flood the hotels.

Now they're thinking of moving the hotels and dredging the lake, but then they don't know what to do about the salt. One idea is to throw it back into the northern basin.

They claim they're only responsible for about 20% of the cotraction of the Dead Sea.

The fact is that whether by natural causes or human activity the scenery in the Dead Sea area is changing.

After they've finished scraping the Rotem plain they're left with gigantic holes. They're very proud that they are nature conciously returning the soil they've taken out in the past and recreating, as close as is humanly possible, the original scenery that was therre before they started their mining operations.

Now they'er try to encourage tourism to their phosphate mine. They built a good road to the entrance to the small crater, Mahtesh Katan and they've made cute view points along the road with explanatios of the geological processes at work here.

I failed to be inspired by the barrennes of the rejuvenated plain with its dead looking yellow sand laid down by tractors. They're trying to recreate the nature which they've damaged but it doesn't seem to be working. Whenever we do that it looks dull and uninteresting. We'll wait and see. Their intentions seem to be good.

I still don't think it's a good idea to go ripping the natural scenery to pieces so that some people can make money. Money is ephemeral the earth is eternal. Swapping eternity for something so transitory as money doesn't appeal to me.

The problem with Netanyahu

Some Israeli leaders, like our present government, express surprise that some nations, like the Arabs, untill 1981, didn't automatically recognise the right of the Jewish People to existence independently in the State of Israel when the state was declared in 1948.

Their attitude was based on their pride in our 3000 year history of achievements; we gave the world monotheism, the Bible, the ten commandments.

Netanyahu and his followers are so taken up by these wonders of the Jews that they forgot the bitter experience, despite our wonderful achievements, that the nations had 2000 years of Jews amongst them yet they didn't consider us a gift from God, on the contrary, most of those nations were antisemitic and persecuted us.

It's true that Herzl, founded the Zionist movement because he believed that antisemitism was caused by the Jews, being a nation without its own land, was a despised nation of wanderers among the other nations.

He believed that the establishment of a Jewish state in their own land would bring an end to anti-semitism and would cause the Jews to be respected as equals among the nations.

No matter how right Herzl was, recognition and good relations with other countries didn't follow automatically with the establishment of the state.

It would have been naive and narrow minded to expect this and Israel's early leaders, like Abba Eban, Moshe Sharett and others toiled long and hard to develop friendly relations with local Arabs in addition to our Arab neighbors and foreigners further afield.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to us that it would entail hard work of fostering good relations and bonds of friendship for us to be recognised by the nations

Only after fighting 3 wars to destroy Israel, one Arab nation, Egypt, recognised Israel's right to exist.

After 5 years Jordan followed but the rest of the Arab world is still antagonistic towards us.

There is still a long, hard road ahead and war isn't going to do the trick, neither is Netanyhu's kind of elitist, isolationist, better than thou attitude.

This is the image that Netanyahu has created in the world outside Israel.

Joining provocative nationalists like Lieberman and Eli Yishai has strengthened this image.

The very presence of these three characters as Israel's leaders puts off any foreigner from seeking a relationship with Israel.

There is in fact nothing these guys can do to ameliorate the ogre-like isolationist, elitist Jewish image they have in the outside world.

The only way to foster good relations with a world that once hated Jews is to get rid of these leaders and to go back to the painstaking, hard job of humbly stretching out the hand of friendship to our Arab brothers especially and to the world in general.

Unrest in Egypt compared to tranquility in Israel

Considering how close, geographically, Israel is to Egypt (we have a common border and Tel Aviv is only 5 hours bus ride from Cairo) asking if things are okay in Israel seems a fair question.

Quiet and no demonstrations even though at least half of Israel's population is opposed to Netanyahu and his government.

Nobody goes out into the streets demonstrating to remove him from power.

This isn't because the economic or political situation is better in Israel than in Egypt.

I'm not familiar with the situation in Egypt but I've seen that they have all the modern facilities, like roads, schools, industry, technology, entertainment, communications etc that any country could wish for.

It's simply because the people are expected to show gratitude to the great leader, virtually sent by Allah, for all the benefits they enjoy and naturally when these benifits are deficient the god sent leader is blamed.

It's like he must resign so that God can send another better leader.

In Israel no one sees the benifits he recieves, whatever they may be, as coming from Netanyahu and his government.

The citizens of Israel know that they themselves and not the govenment have provided any benefits, such as roads, hospitals, food, communication etc which they enjoy.

The govenment is the servant of the citizens and its responsibility is to spend the citizen's money on benifits which the citizens decide on.

The people in Israel feel very strongly that they themselves have created everything they have. They feel that they have a share in the way the country is run.

I'm not even sure that this is true but having that feeling they will never might rebel against the government and the govenment might fall but that will happen only by legal process and not by military coup.

In Israel it's easy to bring the govenment down we don't need a coup because thank goodness we have legal ways to do it.

So we've got peace and quiet here while our autocratic neighbors have to face the anger of their citizens in the streets.

Crisis in the Arab World

According to scholars of the Middle East and Israel situation, like Uriah Shavit, the Arab world considers that the West is in crisis and it is its panacea.

One of the most amusing comments I heard from Shavit, in his lecture at Tel Aviv Univesity last night, about the way Moslem intelectuals see the West, was that one Arab "intelectual" (I think he said it was Ibn Kaldun) comes to this conclusion because the "victims" of the decline live in the word "West" (where the sun sets) and the "saviours (the Moslems) live in the "East" (where the sun rises).

Unlike the Moslem intelectuals I don't concern myself with denigrating the world of Islam as they concern themselves with criticising the West and its culture.

I rather try to think about our (western) culture and its pros and cons.

Unlike the Moslem intelectuals who see Islam as having a mission to save the world I don't see western culture as a God sent saviour of a decadent Moslem culture.

I really don't know which culture is better, western or eastern. I cetainly don't accept esoteric names like "West" or "East" as signs of imminent decline or ascent.

Telling about catastrophes

What's the point of retelling tragedy? The media describes an untold number of tragedies, every day, in great detail, in pictures, films, words and sounds. For example; Thousands of people die in an earthquake and in the flash of a second every person with a radio, TV or newspaper knows about the tragedy in great detail. Even greater detail than the people actually involved in the tragedy. Tragedy, in modern times has two aspects; Vividness and Vastness. Vividness of the description of the tragedy and vastness of the audience who gets to know about it. We can add a third aspect, namely; Velocity. That is the speed with with which the vast audience recieves the vivid description.
These three aspects of tragedy can be summed up in a word, namely; Impact. Each day you can open the news and get shocked.
Getting shocked, however, doesn't bring any thought or action.