HYSTERIA HELPS NO ONE AND NOTHING

I swear, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I heard the results of the elections in the 'so called' Palestinian Authority yesterday and the immediate hysterical reactions to the big Hamas win. Ok, everyone, it's deep breath time. Time to sit back and think for once. What exactly happened there? The Hamas won big time and the Tunisian Thugs were voted out. Why? Was it because the average 'so called' Palestinian really believes the Hamas will get rid of us, OR, because they are sick and tired of the Tunisian Thugs never ending corruption and that they really wanted to get rid of the Tunisian Thugs and give a group they perceive as being strong a chance to get things moving in a better direction? I have a funny feeling that it just might the latter. At least I hope it is. The PA has been in a state of total chaos bordering on anarchy for a long, long time and people really prefer some order in their lives. Abu Mazzen and the rest of the Tunisian Thugs just didn't have the power to clean things up, and stop the terror by disarming the terrorists and getting the PA running for the benefit of the people. If the Hamas wants to get anything done they will have to get the support of the Europeans and Americans. That won't happen until they give up their terrorist ways. Our hysterically vocal leaders would do well to shut up and wait before making far reaching pronouncements that they will eventually have to back down from. Let the Europeans and Americans, who are in no small part responsible for the elections taking place with Hamas participation, sort it, then get on with business. There really is no way the Hamas can function if their international (Western) funding is cut off, and it will be, if they don't get on the same page as their benefactors PDQ. I rather doubt the West will put up with Iran backing them for long and Iranian funding just won't be enough. They need the West to survive.
Abu Ala resigned immediately but Abu Mazzen announced that he's staying in office for now. Other Tunisian Thugs were hard to find after the results were announced. They disappeared and with any luck will stay that way. There has been speculation that Hamas will need to keep some of the Tunisian Thugs on for a while to appease the West and get things started. Abu Mazzen really should have cut and run because he just doesn't have the support to stay and do much of anything. He'd be much safer in just about any other part of the world. Is he brave or stupid? Only time will tell.
So, let's just sit back and wait to see what develops.

WILL I EVER LEARN?

I just never seem to learn to do my homework before running my mouth at warp speed. I based my last post on commentary, instead of checking for myself. As it turns out, the Likud did indeed weed out some of the baddies, and I *can* vote for the Likud list as it stands. I just hope they manage to get the right message across. Kadima scares me more than ever now. No one in that party is even close to being able to stand up to the slightest pressure from Europe or the US. It really is going to be between Kadima and Likud. Bibi is going to have to do a whole lot of work on the social/welfare issues and has to turn it all back on Sharon, and Sylvan Shalom. That could be a problem because that jerk Shalom is Bibi's number two, and their economic strategy was actually correct. The fact that it ended up hurting a whole lot of people who didn't deserve it is beside the point. The major thrust was to get the economy healthy again so that those who need it will be able to get more. It worked too. Our economy is doing quite well, and that's thanks to Sharon and Bibi, Shalom had very little to do with it.
Shinui(Change) did. They kicked out the old number two guy and now the whole party is in an uproar. Poraz (# 2) quit and went home to sulk, and several others quit and are threatening to start a new party. Lapid (# 1) is going to make an announcement on Sunday, and all bets are off on that. Shinui was pretty much a closed party run by two people. The new guard is starting to make noises about opening things up to their general public and allowing the party to be run on a more democratic basis. That would be refreshing. I don't much care about Shinui per se, it's just interesting to watch.

THEY JUST DON'T GET IT: OR MAYBE THEY DO

Yesterday was primary voting day in several parties, notably, The Likud and Shinui. Shinui's delegates seem to have gotten the general idea and voted in new faces for their list of Knesset candidates. That's nice, but as Shinui is right up there with Labor as far as I'm concerned (useless) it really doesn't matter. Likud completely missed the point and kept all the same old, tired, people. That shouldn't come as surprise because they really don't understand that we, the people, want something better. If it had been a proper primary, open to all party members, it might have been different, but, alas.....It sucks that we have to vote for a list, and not individuals. The upside is that no one knows who voted for whom or which list. I desperately want Bibi as P.M. but just as desperately don't want anyone on the Likud Knesset list to get in. Quite a problem I have here. At least I have until the end of March to decide. In many ways I think The Likud has earned a resounding slap in the face, and will most likely get it on 28 March. Just for refusing to give up their ministerial positions, every single minister deserves to get the boot.
If it weren't so important, I could easily sit back and watch the circus, but it is ever so important and that new party must be kept to a minimum in the new Knesset. The Americans are already twisting Ulmert's arm, much as I suspect they twisted Sharon's. It's probably too much to hope that he'll be able to withstand the pressure any more than Sharon did. He's already allowing them to vote in East Jerusalem in the upcoming P.A. elections. Sharon at least was resisting that one. That will make it next to impossible to not allow Jerusalem to be divided eventually. On the other hand, that will make a good campaign issue for Bibi and he'll be easier able to counter their their "radical right wing" rhetoric, which is beginning to sound like a broken record. They are all reading from the same script. I just hope there'll be a backlash vote against them, but considering how we Israelis are not exactly independent thinkers (for the most part) I doubt we'll do as we should and send the lot of home and demand a representative democracy in place of the current insanity we put up with and try so hard to convince ourselves and others is a democracy.

SPECULATIONS ON SPECULATIONS

I've mentioned this before, but that's not going stop me from doing it again. The press just can't not keep trying to report things before they can be reported. This time it's Sharon and all of our news outlets are trying to outdo each other in the 'will he recover or be a resident of the cauliflower patch' sweepstakes. Even the densest of viewers has to have figured out by now that there is simply no answer to that question now, nor will there be for a long time. Come on guys, report what is known and leave the predictions to tea leaf readers.
It would also be nice if all the politicians would stop arguing about who is Sharon's ideological successor. As if anyone could possibly even begin to guess what went on his mind over the last two years. The more I think about it the more I am convinced that one or more western leaders had a very unpleasant chat with him about Gaza and that certain threats might have been involved. Sorry, but and Alzheimer like disease doesn't explain that much of an about face. Credible threats do, and there a few people out there I wouldn't put it past. The thing is, we'll probably never know.

THINGS CHANGE

Things change so quickly here it's often hard to keep up. They are now talking about a slight improvement in Sharon's condition, but there is still a lot of confusion and much missing information, so it's hard to tell. In any case the prognosis is not good.
Bat Chen called and after we settled her new dog questions and my letters, we got on to the 'subject of the day' and after I explained some of the medical stuff to her we came up with a theory. She heard Pat Robertson's statement that this is G-d's punishment for giving away land. I said that while I do agree that it was partly for giving up the land, but also for the way the settlers were turned into refugees in their own country, and that I have this strange picture in my mind of G-d whispering in Sharon's ear. Bat Chen took it a bit further and added that it wouldn't surprise her at all if Sharon woke up and fully recovered as a result of negotiations with G-d. Of course I had to mention Rabin, and she said that he probably turned G-d's offer down flat, and that's why he died so quickly. Who knows? Stranger things have happened and while it's not always obvious, I am a believer. We'll just have to wait and see. We both firmly believe that the hand of G-d is at work in this.

WAITING

There has been pretty much nonstop TV coverage of Sharon's condition in Israeli TV. In fact, it's gone on and on and in the end not reported much *new*s. They just repeat themselves endlessly and get medical experts on to second guess the docs who have the impossible job of treating(trying to save him from their mistakes) him. If (and I say this with great caution) the reports on the meds he received after the first stroke are accurate, Sharon is a victim of gross(not malicious, just overkill, hoping that by overtreating him they could save him) medical malpractice. That much anti coagulation medication is a good way to ensure that he'd bleed out from even a hangnail if it bled. It's too late to second guess about anything that was done because we can't go back in time and change anything. I'm just noting it, and will file it away under "things to keep in mind when....." What were those doctors thinking when they prescribed those dosages of those drugs? Haddassah Ein Karem is supposedly the best hospital in the country, but this makes me wonder. Every time the bleed starts they drag him off to yet another operation, and even more damage is done. The doctors proudly announced that his brain stem looks like it escaped any damage. That's nice, but if the rest of his brain is a cauliflower patch, what good is it? That just leaves him with basic body functions and damn little else.
People have been dragging out stories about patients who woke up from severe brain trauma and relearned everything. All those cases were of much younger people. It's not very helpful to hand out hope of a miracle that is not medically possible. I can't help but feel that we are being lied to at every turn. Anyone with the slightest bit of medical knowledge can put the pieces together and figure things out for themselves.
The religious fanatics are all trying to out do each other with divine reasoning that this is his punishment for going against G-d's will. It may well be, I rather think it is, but not so much a punishment as a way to put a stop to any more. I'm no theologian, but I do think that the so called religious leaders from all denominations should just keep their mouths shut. G-d can take it up with him as and when. Ok, ok, so I don't follow my own advice to the clergy, but, hey! I'm not exactly a person of influence, so there's no danger of too many people being swayed by my views. According to the news they are going to try and disconnect him from the machines after Shabbat or maybe on Sunday. For his sake, I hope they leave him be if he can't survive without them. It's not that I want him dead, I don't, I just want him out of office, which he is in any event. If it's time, it's time.
Of course this all fits in very neatly with my own take on life and death. I think that we are all here for a purpose and when we've fulfilled it, we die. In a vain attempt to second guess the divinity,I think that Sharon has done what he was supposed to do and now it's time for him to go and let the next generation go on from there. There's a lot of talk about his legacy, and the pundits have pointed out that his legacy is mostly made up of contradictions so it will be very hard to follow because no one really knows what it is.
Then there's my own person opinion of the differences between Sharon and Rabin's deaths. Rabin was allowed to be murdered by a fellow Jew. Sharon was taken (is being taken) by G-d himself. Both made huge mistakes, but Rabin's were more grievous than Sharon's. I have some level of understanding of this, but I'm having trouble finding the correct words in English. You work on it for a while! My brain is tired.

SO MUCH FOR GETTING MY MESSAGE ACROSS

These blogs and the internet are amazingly wonderful. I misspoke(wrote) the most important part of yesterday's post and was called to order by a guy in Texas. It still amazes me that people bother to read my blogs, never mind take the time to comment. Most of the comments here have been spam which I promptly delete, but the Texas guy was spot on. What I was really trying to say, but managed to garble was that Sharon has packed more achievements into his 77 years than almost anyone I can think of, and if it is time for him to go, he can go well satisfied with having accomplished so much more than most of could dream of doing in twice that time. The only explanation I can come up with for having written what wrote is that in comparing the whole thing to The Philmore in my mind lead me to imply about Sharon what so many said to me; "He was 83 and lived a long full life." Yes, he did, but that doesn't mean that we should try to comfort ourselves or others with that platitude. Thinking about it that way isn't right, at least not for Sharon, especially when it can interpreted to mean that I think 77 is long enough. Long enough is however long G-d decides for each of us and maybe we should think about that before writing/saying inane, meaningless things of that nature because we don't know how to express ourselves properly. At this point I'm not sure if I'm getting what I meant to say across, or just making it worse. In spite of all rantings against what Sharon has been doing lately, I never wished him dead, just out of office.
The pundits are asking questions like: "why was Sharon allowed to go to the ranch before the catheterization?" "Why didn't he have a helicopter standing by at the ranch?" and "Why did they let him go to back to work so soon?" No brainers, one and all. He was the P.M. and you can't dictate things like that to him. He wanted to go to the ranch for the same reason I checked out of cardiac ICU AMA. There's no place like home. If he had had a chopper standing by for emergencies those same pundits would have been wailing about special privilege. Maybe he should have taken a 'time out' after the first stroke, but, things just don't work like that here, not this close to an election, they don't.
I just hope the docs and others involved, like his sons don't get caught up in the turn the machines off or not issues, and let him go without a lot of argument, if he can't survive without the machines. He doesn't deserve the indignity of that. When it's time, it's time.

Sharon

Sharon has actually already checked out, but, it looks like the docs won't admit it until they try to take him off the machines. His body might still be functioning (sort of) but *he* is gone. When I said I wanted him out office, this wasn't what I had in mind, but at the age of 77, and with a full life behind him, I'm ok with it. I actually liked the guy. Once, in the Knesset cafeteria he mispronounced Kiryat Shmonah, and I corrected him. I correct everyone who says it wrong. He laughed and told me "good for you, keep it up" Other people I've corrected have been less nice about it. Yup, Sharon was a nice guy, his politics not withstanding.
Sharon did so many good things for the country that I can almost forgive his last two years and write them off as some form of Old Age Dementia He served the country his whole life.
The reaction in Gaza is disgusting, only Gaza, mind you, the West Bankers seem to have a bit more sense. The Gazans are having kids walk around with misspelled signs saying Deat To Sharon and other such slogans. Odd that they were all together for the news crews. Don't they realize how things like that look to outsiders? When Ara'fart' croaked there was none of that here even though many of us were happily rejoicing, but not for the press or foreign consumption. Abu Mazzen has completely lost control and has no way to stop them from giving the so called Palestinians a public relations black eye. It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to start shooting kassams again.They seem to be a bit nervous about how we might react.It's interesting that just about every country in the world, including the Arab ones have new crews camped out at the hospital.
The Lebanese guy who spoke for his government almost seemed to be warning the various katyusha shooters to lay low. We'll know soon enough if he got the message across or not. It would be a very bad idea to escalate things up here.
I am hopeful that the new party Sharon started with all those corrupt politicos will self destruct. For now Ehud Olmart is acting P.M. and he's capable enough. The amusing thing is that he and others are going on and on about continuing "Sharon's Path". Ok, which one? For every stated position of his in the last two years, he has at least two, and sometimes three others, diametrically opposed to each other. He said one thing and did another too many times to count. I'm not sure Olmart is strong enough to carry the election. I certainly hope not.

SO SHARON HAS A HOLE IN HIS HEART

Poor, poor Sharon. He's going to have a cardiac catheterization on Thursday and the news is full of "will they put him under or just use a local? And will he be able to run things or should he hand his prime ministerial powers to someone else?" I don't think he should be running things now, in any event, but, unfortunately, no one asked me. I am rather enjoying the knowledge that he has a good two months of pain from the catheter insertion site ahead of him. Oh boy. Does that ever hurt, and it stays sore forever.The fact that he will have a purple groin will not, I repeat will not influence me to vote for him. Nothing will. The man is a menace, and has to go. Kassans are still flying and things are super tense up here, not to mention the fact that the settlers he kicked out of Gaza and promised to promptly resettle are still not settled, or even close to it. He turned them into refugees in their own country and the PA is in total chaos, verging on anarchy, and Abu Mazzen is doing nothing to get things on track there. It's a bit nuts that the various armed groups can weak havoc in the PA and shoot kassams at us at the same time. Their so called cease fire is over and they are planning the end of the Zionist entity, while the whole world looks on, just waiting for us to be vaporized, or worse, defend ourselves. They are so shortsighted that they simply can not comprehend that they are detested as much, if not more than we are, and that they are also on the international terror list of things to get rid of. Sharon just isn't up to dealing with any of it, and I don't trust his post CVA cognitive powers at all. We need Netanyahu, not Sharon and his corrupt cronies.