Poems 2015

(What do you do)
when a famous person
whose fame, having reached the tipping point
has begun perpetuating itself
as a house hold reference point
uses their fame
their access to platforms
their brand
when someone is seeking an example:mother theresa
the dalai lama 
to make a group wrong
to judge harshly
rather than understand
to fling adjectives and opinions around
that are designed to inflame the passions
when they ask you to sell your family
betray your history
turn your back on that which formed you
ask you to sacrifice
that which they will not
to earn their praise and acceptance


when a person
lauded for their moral leadership
selectively witholds their empathy
and seems to see only bad in you
and only good in your enemies
cruel and implacable as they are
hardening entrenched positions
fuelling old hurts

does their moral stature slip a little

__________________________

Safety
When I drive I scan the road repeatedly
for cyclists
pedestrians
people turning right from the wrong lane
attractive women with large breasts
____________________________



Feeding the fire

feeding the fire
are words like "betrayal" "abused" "murdered"
"rejected" "abandoned"
water and balm are words like
"
_____
America

Driven mad
perhaps by lies
or meaninglessness
and the mirage of connection
another child-man
takes out his toy pistol
and sprays his fellow citizens
with real bullets
____________________

At the funeral
we clutch onto
our prayer books and umbrellas
as if they were life itself
_____________

I passed
like a black horse in the night
unseen
lines of causality
shimmering in the air
perhaps
perhaps not
when the mind
grows desperate
for something
salty
or sweet
see how long
it can chew on
I don't know 

___________
The Torah as Tao

The Torah is compard to water
which always flows
to the lowest point
from the highest point
and is best carried
in an empty vessell
______
like tatters in the wind
something feels so fragile
is it my words?

______________
In the morning
when I open the gate
the hens
hungry to eat
rush out
over my foot
each one
as light
as a
feather
_______________________
 

The magical moment when it is seen that your chains are your wings

_______________

If everything you touch turns to sand how come you still have fingers?

________________________
at a particular
time and place
the mind and breath slow
to an easy pace
and the SatGuru
emerges 
from the ground of space

___________________

There is plenty to do in the future
there was plenty that could have been done in the past
there is nothing to do
right now
_________________________

Lean into the wind
don't stand by the door
_______________________



Its 7 o Clock and here is the news

Its 7 o Clock and here is the news

Paw paw trees prefer mildly acidic(?) soil
your liver knows exactly what to do
a snail got away, one did not
the funeral will be held by ants
people got tangled up in thought
again
weeds and clouds
escaped unnoticed
toenails grew quietly in the night
Someone forgave herself 
Someone else put a chocolate under your pillow
the note read: "there is food in the fridge, I love you"
doctors sewed up
the hole in the heart
photographs of faces
shortly after death
reveale its not so bad


________________________

Ella went to the beach
paddled in the water
and leapt and danced in the sand
the wind came up
clouds gathered
she came home
and pranced around the yard
mouth open to catch the raindrops
when the thunder roared
she grew loud as well
frenetically running
through the house
much later
she fell asleep on the bed
and twitched and shuddered
in her sleep
I can only imagine
what dogs dream about
_______________________

I value myself because I know how to receive as well as take
I am excessive in nothing including righteousness
I still recall how to be playful and imagine will do so til the moment the body drops
I practice reading the letters G-d writes me and letting go daily
I'm a sensual sensuous being who experiences the full gamut of human emotions
I folow my bliss and do not choke it with seemingly pragmatic considerations
I surge towards balance in all things
I am mindful that my heaviness does not betray my lightness
I take nothing for granted
I long for the redemption and liberation from the sadness of ephemerality of much name and form

__________________________
PRAYER FOR BALANCE AND DEHOMOGENISATION

Rabeynu shel olam
Hidden One of the world
in places that have never seen
an observant Jew walking with their lulav and etrog in hand
let there be many observant Jews
in places where there are only observant Jews let there be
free thinking Jews
Jewish heretics,
Jews who hang glide and eat sushi on Yom Kippur
Jewish plumbers and civil engineers
tradesman, fisherfolk, basketball players and
Professors of Japanese art
and best of all
let it not be an either or
______________________

a memory-picture:
my dad is working with a jigsaw
it has a strong die cast iron head
and a round blue motor housing
it lives in a red rectangular
metal box, the kind you don't see
any more
with yellow blades for wood
and blue blades for metal
we're building something together
probably a model railway layout
and at some point he lets me
have a go with the saw.
 
now rub out 
the backyard 
long gone
rub out
the model railway
rub out
the saw and its blue and yellow blades
rub out the metal box
rub out the South Africa of 1975
long gone
rub out my dad
interred in West Park cemetry
rub out eleven year old me
never to return

what remains of 
that then in this now?
something
that is not a thing
if you like
you can call it
love
____________


POEM FOR EREV YOM KIPPUR 5776

Sydney is different today
even though most of the people here
neither know nor care
that Yom Kippur is approaching
the roads are emptier
the streets are quiter
the buildings more thoughtful
and pensive
a solemn joy
wells up from the manholes
the notion that there could ever be
such a thing as a mistake is revealed in its
hilarious absurdity
an August breeze blows
swaying trees and rearranging plastic bags and tired thoughts
sweeping away past and future
and these words

_______________

The heart’s slight sleight of hand

how it opens and shuts

without hardly moving, how

cattle lowing in a truck

become good economic data

how one person sees a terrified child

the other a future terrorist

one a grieving family

the other their familiar kept safe.

______________

I have watched the bbc for years

cherry picking “the news” re Israel

you know when someone is out to get you

and you can do no right in their eyes

and you know how it is with groups

how its comfortable to say the things

that seem to make you acceptable

this is how it works in newsrooms and bars

where journalists hang out

they report for each other

__________

The truth eludes

but these are some snapshots of me

trying to catch it by its disappearing tail

as it exits frame right

like a mythical good-luck dragon

_____________________________________

Hanevicha shel Balak hakelev hameshotet

havhavEloheemEloheem
havhavEloheemEloheem
havhavEloheemahah
havhavEloheemahah
ahahEloheemavah
ahahEloheemavah
ahahavah
ahahavah
ahah
(repeat as many times as needed)
________________________________

Untitled

my heart is a very private thing
not like a bird on a bower I sing
but like a cricket in long grass
who halts his song when strangers pass

______________________________________

INVENTORY

One 51 year old body, +/- 400 000kms
a drawer of socks
a bag of midnight regrets
one lawn complete with ants and dog droppings
a mortgage
some children
one wife

From my father, may peace be upon him:
a shellac 78rpm “Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Chili Peppers”

and a 2-8-0 Rivarossi model steam locomotive

a swimming pool filled with gratitude.

one female dog
three female spinnifex hopping mice
some middle aged unrequited longings
a slowly stiffening routine
sixty white Lexipro next to the bed
because of the fear at dawn
an empty mezuza case
filled with the vastness of G-d

and whenever Life calls it to melt or enlarge

a heart quickly moved in its ribbed garage

_____________

Researchers have found
that water is wet
that sadness makes the bones heavy
that the mouth hole is connected to the arse hole
that a positive correlation between the proboscis and the sense of smell 
is possible and probable 

we now know that what we call meat is actually the striated muscle of ungulates

and that eating small amounts of chocolate will not significantly decrease your life span, unless done while laughing and snorkelling at the same time 
and this vast new wealth of knowledge is being prodded and poked by expert committees and working sub groups and advisory panels even as we speak
bringing us much closer to finding cures
for an ever expanding array of ailments that no one had heard of
50 years ago

______________

When I thought I was an urn

I worried about the other urns

When I thought I was a wave

I worried about the sea

When I thought I was no thing

then no thing worried me

_______________________

A good husband who can find him
for his price is above shares in banks or mining houses
he takes out the garbage, he loads the dishwasher
he cuts his toe nails, he puts down the seat
trims his nasal hairs, fixes more than he breaks
he unblocks the sink, does maths with the children,
he takes them to sport, and cooks up a storm
he leads the dog to green pastures and rinses her bowl
folds up the linen and puts it away
he handles his needs without bothering his wife
who contentedly snores at his side
his shoe cupboard declares his fancy footwork all his days
and in the evening obituaries quietly sing his praise

____________________________________

TO ISAAC BABEL

sometimes I let 
the Dog choose the path
The Spring is in Her

so let Spring find the way
Autumn will decide 
some other day.

___________________________

Oh ego
mean and bitter
summitless hill
and yet I insist
on climbing you still

_________________________

In stillness and darkness
in the mushroom shed of the mind
new poems sprout

_____________________

Emigration

It felt
like there was a war going on
I ducked my head low
to avoid the shouts, whistles
bombs and bullets
there was a bang and blinding flash
and then I could not see
I crawled on my belly
crawled and crawled
my eyes tightly shut
til I seemed to enter
some kind of tunnel
I crawled on further
til the explosions and shouting
were only a vague rumble in the distance
then I lay there in the quiet.
panting, not moving,
my fingers stroking the earth beneath them
so glad to be
safe
after what seemed like ages, when my breathing had
stilled, I raised my head, it bumped
against something.
I tried to move my foot but it
struck some sort of barrier
I tried the other leg -
something held it fast
I dared to open my eyes a little
gradually my sight returned
and I was able to glance around.
I was in a suburban house
in a Sydney suburb
with a mortgage disappearing into the future
and a sell by date

stamped on my forehead
receding into the past.

______________

THE FOUNDLING
My mother laid me at the foot of the fence
on my back, quiet and wrinkled,
and as if in a well, I gazed from below
'til she fled as one flees from a blow
and I gazed up at her, as from if in a well
and the moon like a candle raised high.
But that very same night
at the appointd hour
I returned to my mother's house
like a ball rolling back
to one who kicked it away
I return to her house
like a ball rolling back
caressing her neck
with hands of shade
Before the Almighty,
from her throat she tore me
as if I were some kind of leech
but when night came down
I returned as before
and this has become our pact:
as before, at night-fall, I return
and she bows to my whip lash 
The doors of her dream are wide open to me
and no one is there but I
for the love of our souls is still taught
like a bow, from the day I was born
because the love of our souls remains taught
and can never be given or taken away
Thus 'til the end, God has not moved me
from my mother’s groaning heart
and I - who was severed without being weaned
will not be parted or moved
and I - who was severed without being weaned
enter her house and lock the gate
She aged in my jail and grew barren and shrank
and her face grew folds like my own
then I dressed her in white with my tiny hands
like a mother dresses her babe
then I dressed her in white with my tiny hands
and carried her off without saying to where
I placed her at the foot of the fence.
gazing quietly on her back
and she looked at me, laughing, as from if in a well
and we knew our battle was done
and she laughing, looked up
as from if in a well
and the moon like a candle raised high

Natan Alterman ( 1910-1970)
Translated by Immanuel Suttner
______________________________________________
Natan Alterman was one of Israel's greatest modernist poets, and renowned for his metrical virtuosity. The above translation is of one of his poems that is very difficult to translate and yet preserve the original prosody and rhyme scheme: Note the poem is written in atbash format - that is the first verse (verse "aleph") parallels the last verse (verse "taf"), the second verse (verse "bet") parallels the penultimate verse ( verse "shin") and so on....with the middle verse acting as a bridge between the two parallel sections. Here is the first verse transliterated so that the English reader can get a sense of the original:
Hanichatni imi leraglay hagadayr
kmut panim veshokayt, al hagav
va’abit ba milmatah, kemo min habe’ayr
ad noosah kehanas min hakerav
va’abit bah milmatah, kemo min habe’ayr
veyarrayach alaynu huram kemo nayr

______________________________

I never did anything good or bad
it was the desire for applause

that made me swell
and the fear of ending

that made me shrink

hoping death would not find
my hiding place

it was the cells, the moon
the stars, the knife,

the wind, the tides, the rain
I watched them roar and flicker
convinced that it was me

_________________

Swing low, sweet chariot

When I died
I found myself

in a sort of no man's land
brown and bare,

festooned with litter,

dried human turds
and rusty razor wire.

In the distance

the gates of heaven
so near and yet so far.

Too tired and heavy to move I lay
looking up at the darkening sky
when like the door of a nagmash
the gates fell down
and out poured the righteous
of every faith and time.

They unfurled a stretcher
and gently lifted me up
singing

no one gets left behind

_______________________________

* Kafhakelah – Hebrew – in betwixt and in between, neither here nor there, in Kabbalah a soul that wonders between olamhazeh and olamhabah

* APC - armoured personnel carrier
_________________________________

We stopped after dark at a red traffic light
the most beautiful red I had ever seen

Such love I felt, I could have lingered forever
and was utterly bereft when it winked and turned green
___________________________

RECYCLING

The night sky
is a big black plastic

garbage bag
into which some yawning

galactic worker

at the end of their shift

(having spotted it on the floor)

has carelessly chucked the earth

and in the places
where a child

of the universe
has punched holes

with an interstellar
bic pen
little stabs of light
seep in

on one side
a large gash

perhaps from overuse
they tape up the hole but

each month
it slowly falls apart
revealing seas

and a kindly face

and in the morning a different worker
blinking and rubbing her eyes
rolls up the bag
and stuffs it behind the sun

ready for the night shift
to use again

_______________________

Very occasionally

when hunger overwhelms shame
I duck out of the rest of my life

into a faded stale smelling

temple of forgetfulness

to find some relief
before going back

to the ones I love

Once two women

offered their bodies
for a certain amount

(plus 10% on amex)
one was from Thailand, the other from Taiwan
the Thai ineffectually rubbed my feet

but I felt too sorry for her to murmur anything but
how wonderful it was
the Taiwanese woman was more effective
her English better, her act generally slicker
when I turned over from stomach to back she took charge
I discovered a strange bony protrusion just above her coccyx
she said other clients had also commented upon it
and stopped for a moment to examine herself
and felt the area above the buttocks
of the Thai woman to compare,
then continued on me, wanting it over with,

but I asked her to wait a while longer
now sorry I'd paid the Thai to come along as she was
really rather absent as was I
popping in and out of an irksome disembodiedness,
as my body responded in its habitual arc

the Taiwanese whispered expletives in my ear and
I was like a faithful actor

determined to support us to play our roles
but also wanting my money's worth,

these moments of hoped-for bliss being rare.
I asked the Siamese to hold me from behind
so that I and the other woman could be more together
(you see how men really are monagamous)  
and they held me, and I held her,

and she whispered crude words perhaps some clients had liked

and I said I don't want fuck I want love
which is true

When I was done
and our humanity rushed back in
I thanked them and bowed,
bhuddha on the massage table
too vigilant not to blow the whistle

on my mr sensitive

but the melancholy I felt

was genuine enough
for them

and me

and all creation
so far away from home

______________________

There is a place 
called Lake Sadness
I do not visit often
and so it comes
to visit me
_______________

my heart is a very private thing
not like a bird on a bower I sing
but like a cricket in long grass
who halts his song when strangers pass

______________________________________

Lake Sadness:
I dive into its silky depths
roll down my windows
to let the inky darkness in
I sink down and down and down
until it is so everywhere
It might as well be Joy

__________________________

if you can hop and skip associatively
then my friend, you are living poetry

_________________________________

RECYCLING

The night sky
is a big black plastic garbage bag
into which some yawning galactic worker
having spotted it on the floor at the end of their shift
has carelesly chucked
the earth

and in the places
where a child of the universe
has punched holes

with an interstellar
bic pen
little stabs of light
seep in

on the other side
perhaps from overuse,
is a large gash some call the moon
they tape up the hole but each month
it slowly falls apart

and in the morning a different worker
blinking and rubbing her eyes
rolls up the bag
stuffs it behind the sun

ready for the night shift
to use again

_______________________

 

THE SICK PERSON'S PRAYER

Please G-d
allow me to take out the rubbish
to go to the toilet unaided
to feed the animals
to sweep the path
to wash the dishes
to sort out my daughter's uniform
to make a meal
to walk to where people gather
to plant spring flowers
to hang up loads of washing
if You will grant me this
I faithfully promise 

to rejoice in every moment

____________________

there is sight
here is seeing
there is doing
here is being

______________________

Zoreach kochav meyal
zoreyach kochav bifnim
lo nanuach velo nishkot
ad she yitmazgu
panim el panim

______________________

mishnayos for the poor
kabbalah for the rich
if you aint got much money
life is a bitch
once I had opinions
once I knew whats right
now I don't get involved
in anyones fight
give me bread so I may turn
with every fibre of my being
to look beyond what comes and goes
and waken from the dream

_____________________

Shabbat is the sun
around which the days of the week orbit
and in stillness and the blinding light
all doing is born

_______________________

Re agriculture and human hubris:
G-d produces
people manipulate

________________________

even the story
that I seek refuge
from the here and now
in abstractions
is just an idea

_____________________

I like to hang out every now and then
with words

_____________________

I suppose (somewhat reluctantly)
that if pleasure and pleasantness do not take you there
then pain will

Ray Perkel Depend on it. Therefore, you're safe.

__________________________

"If there is no flour, there is no poetry
and if there is no poetry, there is no flour"
Pirkei Immanuel 

·  Ray Perkel May you be blessed with flour and poetry in abundance all your days.

Immanuel Suttner amayn amayn, kayn yehee ratzon

_______________________________

Don't worry
if you don't say it
someone else will

_____________________

Dont wait...have your future right now!

______________________

SOD ( "secret")

As far as the ear can hear
as far as the eye can see
objects: hand, bird; litter; sensations: pleasure; pain
and every single one
a signpost back to me

______________


SHEMA

After the “dehhhh”
the silence
that was there before bereishit
_____________

bereishit – the beginning, the beginning of creation

_________________


I have this degenerative disease
that is very slowly
robbing me of my mobility
so that by the time I am dead
I will not be able to walk
________________________


Verbringen

I am at a party
with Ramana and Osho, Kabir and Rumi
the Baal Shem Tov and Dod Zvi
St Francis, Katie Byron, Rav Kook,
and Gangaji
we link hands, dance the hora
one-two-three
left righ-yet
one-two-three
left riot
faster we spin ‘til
our feet leave the floor
Osho’s beard flies
like a comet on the wind
Rumi is like
a sweet breeze at my side
Nisarghadattha tells me
it’ll be ok
the fruit will ripen
any day

on the edges the waiters
gaze wistfully
then fall into the dance
of eternity
_____________
Verbringen – Yiddish/German – to spend time in each other’s company
dod = uncle or cousin (Hebrew)
___________________

Jewishness as a wound
Jewishness as a vocation
Jewishness as a blemish
Jewishness as over compensation

Jewishness as a fashion statement
Jewishness as a  trumpet
Jewishness as a non-event
Jewishness as a status symbol
Jewishness as a quiet unassuming presence
Jewishness as a bridge or a fence

Jewishness as a non-event
Jewishness as a bridge or a fence
Jewishness as status symbol
Jewishness as  a quiet presence



_____________________

I have tinnitus of the legs

Fear and Trembling in Ohr Somayach

My soul is thirsty for Elohim, for the living God, when will 1
come and see the face of Elohim ?
Tehillim / Psalms42,2


 (From my back pages...I think this was written around 1992)


God is everywhere and everything, and God was 400 people listening to a shiur on Monday night the 15th of February, the24th day of Shvat in the 5753 year of the creation of this world.

I was one of those 400, 'and I am writing  this exploration now,but I will never be able to tell you who I really am. Yes, its true what Akiva Tatz said at that shiur. He said there is an
outer glance and an inner glance. And the inner glance, the inner da-at, is terribly untellable. The one who mistakenly hunts it to tell the other is wasting eveyone's time. But with correct human relations, said Akiva Tatz, you don't need to tell it. You know you know, the other knows he knows, you know he has his
perception of.the knowledge and vice a versa.

Why do I write then ? As a sollopsistic exercise, to tell myselfwho I am, to clarify?

Possibly.

Or maybe just because I believe you don't know.For I certainly do not.

When I walk in I feel there are huge forces at work here. One cannot but be overawed-by them, the strength of conformity, uniformity, the delights of self abnegation, of shirking ultimate
responsibility. And those forces are at work in me too, making mylegs tremble, making me need to dissent in order to feel myself.

Four hundred people stand up like clockwork automatons to welcome the Rav.
I don't stand up. I'm the only one of the males not wearing a
kipa. I don't stand up because I'm trying to learn to be
autonomous, to stand on my own two feet so to speak. Everyone sits.

Rabbi Akiva Tatz waits a moment, closes his eyes, waits for God to put the right words, the
truthful words into his mouth. Ad-nai sefatai tiftach, upee yagid tehilatecha

I jot down some observations, to remind myself I did not come here naked. My° hands are shaking a
little, from the strength of the confrontation with unresolved issues.

Every article about religion should begin with death. Every profound article will seek to tell the untellable. But, when Icame up the steps of the Ohr Somayach Beit hamidrash, I do notsee death -although I am aware of the question death poses - but Ohr Somayach's fund raiser Larry Shain. I first met Larry Shein
when I was 17 and he was 22, or so. At 17 1 went to Israel,intending to study at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Instead, whether becauseof my fears or my ambitions, I ended up studying at yeshivat Ohr Somayachin Jerusalem.

Larry had come to Ohr Somayach at around the same age as I, but a few years prior.. Coming
back from a year as an AFS scholar in the States, he had stopped off in
Jerusalem and `completely unexpectedly' gotten involved with Jewish fundamentalism (as outsiders would perhaps label it) or

frumkeit or yiddishkeit (as insiders might refer to it.) In or out? You decide, and that decision decides for you, with never ending consequences.

He had joined the world which refers to itself as the world of `Torah Judaism' (The name is a misnomer. Talmudic Judaism would be better .) One of my fist Shabatot in Jerusalem were spent in his home. All of those first days at Ohr Somayach were a little confused, young and impressionable as I
was, soft and unformed and eager to please as I ws, confused as I was, hungry for direction as I was. On my
second day there the wind blew my blue velvet and gold brocade kipa purchased for my bar mitzva away:
"I'll get -you another one:", said a generous older bocher and brought me a big black number. I thanked him and put. it on.
[ Fundamentalism, like most other things ...]

Larry got. married to his highschool sweetheart Jenny, who followed him back into the ghetto which her grandparents or great grandparents had so determinedly left. He spent six years studying in Israel, then
came back to South Africa, to save Jews from ignorance and assimilation. He now raises most of the
R90 000 a month Ohr Somayach needs to keep on going. [this is 1992 we're talking about]

What would this capable young man have become if he wasn't a fund raising rabbi ? A trader on the stock exchange, perhaps honest, perhaps not ? Or maybe a civil rights lawyer ? A secular Jewish leader like
Mervyn Smith or Mendel Kaplan ?" Interesting to speculate, and to wonder who has
gained, and who has lost. And who is to judge which path would have been better. I remember Larry - in the context of an argument - banging the table and teeling me he would rather die than having his son Gavriel (who way then only one on two years old, and is now a father with children in high school) be exposed to the pritzus (sexual immorality, permissivenes) in the Israeli army. He got very passionate
about it.

(I saw this from both a liberal secular point of view - how silly to get so hit up about a bit of sperm, a vagina,
to get so stuck on that. But then again sex as a subversive and uncontainable force has never really been defused by secular "sex as recreation' approaches to it: after all, it is potentially the starting point for new life, with all the joy and suffering  which that entails, and therefore is it wrong to treat sex with this reverential, sacrosanctal awe? After all, it, is a gateway, a door.

When I was very small, the family visits to shul were infrequent, arid l was intimidated by the large hall , the unfamiliar language and goings on, and the strange men in their black gowns up on the
bima. Then a year before my bar-mitzvah I began to attend shul every friday night and Saturday morning, talking and telling jokes with the other boys in the back row, singing Lecha dodi, 
Yigdal and Adon Olam with great gusto. I knew the words by heart when to stand and sit, knew when to cover my eyes. Shul became a comfortable and unthreatening womb. Singing together was very enjoyable, but it was also a declaration of proficiency and belonging. Because it occurred every week, and, as far as we
youngsters imagined, had been ocurring for practically ever, it was a pleasure of a different sort, different: from thursday night dinners at a steakhouse or a dip in the pool. It was community,confirmation of roles, and sometimes a vague hint of otherness in a daily round which was pretty unmysterious. But its
difference was only one of the many differences that made up ouryoung lives in South Africa of the 1970's. It came along on Friday nights, just as rugby practice came along on Tuesdays, and the torture session at. the orthodontist on Thursdays. Like school or sport shul had its rules, and in many ways they were less

Simchat Torah Thoughts: We have met the enemy and he/she/it is us

It seems to me there is a tendency to project onto the psychiatric establishment, multi-national pharmaceuticals etc etc our shadow stuff...that they are the “baddies” who pathologise deviance and attempt to control the symptoms of deviance with money making drugs administered by a hierarchical system which has the power as gate keepers to define the sane, with all its attendant privileges, and the insane, with all its powerlessness and exclusion.

But this conceptualisation of “the problem” seems to me to be as futile as the war on drugs was futile when it ignored the demand side and only went after the supply side. There is no point in trying to get rid of Afghan growers or Jihadist drug networks or Mexican cartels when you have huge urban markets that demand recreational drugs...no matter how many producers and distributors are removed, new ones arise to take their place because their is a lucrative demand for the product. In the same way we create the demand that our appointed agents – doctors, psychiatrists, carerers, police – remove significant deviance (illness, old age, madness, dysfunction, criminality, extreme poverty) to the periphery of our vision. When we have soccer world cups we drive all the beggars and homeless people out of town, so as not to stain the eys of tourists with our city's blemishes. When we have V8 motor car races in Australia, we take the animal emblazoned on our coat of arms - the kangeroo - and shoot any of them that may possibly wonder onto the track and stop the mad racing around asphalt which is done in the name of entertainment and distraction.

We – you and I and pretty much everyone - collectively create and maintain the conditions for closed mental wards. In the same way as we banish abattoirs and land fill and sewage farms to the peripheries of our cities, to keep the under belly of our so-called civilization hidden from ourselves, so we banish our “criminals” to jails, our toxic waste to poor developing countries, and our insane to locked wards. As with the butterfly affect, there is a direct link between the numbed out signature which ends most commodified interactions in Australia (“have a nice day”) and the collective hiding from ourselves which gathers like a cloud of numbing anxiety and depression over large swathes of the Australian human landscape (and any other over developed society). 

It is our collective fear of significant deviance and diversity that creates police forces and psychiatrists. We give them permission to act as our agents, they do not derive their power from anything other than the collective permission we grant them to keep us safe by removing significant deviance from the public realm where we may encounter it and where it may unsettle our already tenuous hold on our own sense of ok-ness. Not only do we allow police to criminalize dysfunction, and psychiatrists and psychologists to pathologize otherness, we task them with doing this. They are no more complicit than we are. So let the work of integration begin with me...bring the killing fields, slaughter houses and locked wards back home, into my house. After all, my house is large, and has many rooms.

Some thoughts on the Israel-Gaza war and its fallout in the Western world

Theories of causality are many, and none ever explain any given phenomenon fully, because everything causes everything in a universe where Jah is One. Some proponents of the Bully, Demonize and Subjugate campaign like to imagine that the end of political apatheid in South Africa was caused by sanctions and international boycotts. They then charicature Israel as similar to South Africa, and suggest it can be "transformed" (i.e erased) in similar fashion - through boycotts and sanctions.
 
However other readings of history would attribute to sanctions against SA only a very minor role. What ended political apartheid were the inherent contradictions of an untenable system, and the impossibility of running a capitalist economy while only utilising a tiny portion of the human resources of a country, and excluding most of its citizens from paricipation in the market as producers or consumers. In the same way sanctions on Israel will not prove transformative - on the contrary they will play into the hands of Israel's right, and harden Israeli intransigence. What could cause the implosion of Israel in its current form is not external. As with South Africa it is internal contradictions, and unresolved fault lines (of identity, vision and purpose) that eventually bring about an "end" (i.e transition) to name and form - be it of an individual or collective.
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The quiet coercion of delegitimization and dehumanization: As a child growing up in Apartheid South Africa, in the 1970s, largely because of the attitudes I imbibed from my family, from around the age 11 or 12, if someone in the circles I moved in - neighbourhood kids, school, Hebrew school - ever used the word "kaffir" I would upbraid them, and at the least ask them not to use the word in my presence, because I did not want to be guilty of a crime of ommission or comission. IIt is the very same impulse now that leads me to resist the use of the word "Zionist" when it is flung about as some kind of pejorative term whose negative connotations both speaker and listener mutually agree to.

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It seems to me in terms of Israel putting out the clear message that it will not accomodate or appease any Palestinian entity which has not made peace with the idea and the reality of the existence of the State of Israel as a territorially and economically viable nation state, it must balance this firm and unambiguous stance with the firm and unambiguous assurance to the Palestinians that when they demonstrate by deed they have shifted internally (for example changing their school curricula to reflect co-existence rather than a staged triumphalism, not trying to harness anti-Semitism as a "useful beast" that will further their cause....wild beasts are unpredictable and often turn on their "owners") Israel will not obstruct the creation of a territorially viable state which also (depending upon what the Palestinians and their backers do with it) has the potential to be economically viable. 

This means that Israeli schools need to show Judea and Samaria as “disputed territories” not as an integral and inalienable parts of the State of Israel (even if they are inalienable parts of the land of Israel). It makes it more difficult to request Palestinian maps reflect the reality of Israel if Israeli maps do not reflect the reality of a nascent Palestinian state. At the moment the stick is clear, but the carrot is not, and this is perhaps a crucial omission from Israeli foreign policy and the public discourse about the conflict.
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Those “Jews” who are the poster boys/girls of the “radix malorum Israel est” brigade (the “Israel is the root of all evil” cult) generally do not participate in Jewish communal life in any of its manifestations, do not consciously contribute to Jewish thought or culture, and their children (if they have children) do not identify as being Jewish. These people only claim their Jewishness when they think it gives them a platform from which to attack, devalue, malign and misrepresent the things that the overwhelming majority of practising, affiliated Jews hold as dear and central to their communal identity.
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To those who talk of "genocide" in Gaza: Don't debase the word "genocide" by flinging it about, just because you believe it will help you enroll others to your cause. Save it for real genocides, and hopefully people will not have grown inured to its weight because of overuse.
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 Those who demonize Israel (as opposed to merely criticising Israeli policies) have forgotten that we have met the enemy and he is us: "When we allow ourselves to be persuaded by speech that seeks to draw evermore entrenched lines between one set of people and another, we tacitly accept apathetic prejudice as an acceptable means to justify our feelings of injustice. This usually results in the demonizing of otherwise well-meaning people, forcing them into positions they did not themselves wish for, and from which they can only be expected to fight back, sometimes vehemently. Listen to just about anyone react to the outbreak of violence in Arsal (Lebanon) [or Israel / Gaza], and you can hear this dynamic at play."
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/559970-limits-of-the-language-world
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One of those historical ironies: Zionism, which was meant to end anti-Semitism, by 'normalising' the Jewish people so that they became a rooted localised people like "every other nation" instead has provided the excuse and pretext for 'new' and virulent forms of anti-Semitism, which in turn bolsters the Zionist narrative that Jews will never be unconditionally accepted outside of their homeland; (that Jews who think differently are not necessarily accepted in some parts and strata of Israeli society is another matter...) Jew hatred of the sort we are witnessing now turns disinterested Jews into potential candiates for aliya (going to Israel). So Zionism, rather than resolving anti-Semitism, now, in some ways, needs it. But if anti-Semitism is the price for Israel to grow and consolidate itself, it is a very hefty price indeed...
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“If in the past year you didn’t CRY OUT when thousands of protesters were killed and injured by Turkey, Egypt and Libya, when more victims than ever were hanged by Iran, women and children in Afghanistan were bombed, whole communities were massacred in South Sudan, 1800 Palestinians were starved and murdered by Assad in Syria, hundreds in Pakistan were killed by jihadist terror attacks, 10,000 Iraqis were killed by terrorists, villagers were slaughtered in Nigeria, but you ONLY cry out for GAZA, then you are not pro HUMAN RIGHTS, you are only ANTI-ISRAEL.” — Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, July 15, 2014
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Syria's conflict has killed 170,000 people, including more than 9,000 children, according to the Observatory, and forced nearly half the country's population to flee their homes." Why are networks not showing images from this conflict every night? What makes the death of a 100 children in Gaza more newsworthy than 9000 in Syria? Is it because there is a pre-existing audience ready to thrill with rage and horror at "Israeli agression" while there is only indifference and apathy re fatalaties from civil wars and sectarian conflicts within the Arab/Iislamic world? Or is it because the Syrian conflict has been going on for two years, and the fickle media just gets bored and moves on to exacerbating conflict somewhere else? Or is it because its to dangerous to cover, so they cover conflicts which are relatively safe and easy to access?.
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 Strange parallel reality: when I read some news sources they report not only Palestinian casualties, but also from the bomb shelters which Israelis have to run to several times a day. They report on the thousands of projectiles fired into Israel. They report on the foiled series of terror attacks from tunnels dug under Kibbutzim and villages in the South of Israel, attacks designed to massacre Israelis and in some cases , to take Israelis captive to use as "trading" cards. They report on the terror off residents of the South, traumatised by missile explosions and the sounds of digging (sometimes real / sometimes imagined) below their rooms. They report on Hamas videos calling Israeli and Jews "cockroaches"and urging their extermination. They point out that in most conflicts between Western style democracies and dictatorships casualties have been lopsided in favour of the democracies, because the democraceis tend to be both technologically more sophisticated (because, for example, of the free flow of information and the inclusion of women) and because democracies tend to invest in the protection of their citizens, rather than using them as canon fodder for PR "gains". And they point out that a score card of casualties has only been lovingly kept in the Israeli - Palestinian conflict...you won't easily find one for Desert Storm, or the Iran-Iraq war,or Xianjeng province in China, or for ISIS, which last week and this has killed more than 700 people. But when I go to the Sydney Morning Herald all of this has been vanished and the only representations allowed are Palestinian suffering....

The poisoned lancet

Recently the British "medical" journal The Lancet, which is infamous for its demonization of Israel, Israelis and by extension, Israeli doctors carried an "open" letter lambasting Israeli doctors for all sorts of imaginary crimes:  

http://honestreporting.com/the-lancets-latest-abuse-of-medicine-for-political-ends/

The Lancet's editor Dr Richard Horton has a pathological preoccupation with caricaturing Israel, and providing BDS proponents and conspiracy theorists with a platform (of course no right of reply usually allowed by him). 

Here are two responses to the apologists for Islamic supremacist terror featured uncritically by Horton: 
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Response to “An open letter for the people of Gaza” which has been sent to The Lancet. The response was authored by Professor David Stone (emeritus, Glasgow University)
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Like your correspondents Manduca et al (An open letter for the people for Gaza 22 July 2014), we too are appalled by the tragic situation in Gaza. Unlike them, however, our letter has been written on behalf of the people of both Gaza and Israel.
We take strong issue with both the factual and the ethical content of their letter. First the facts. Israel left Gaza entirely in 2005, removing almost 10,000 Israelis and all of its armed forces, with no intention of returning. The response from Gaza was escalating and unprovoked violence, mainly in the form of rocket attacks indiscriminately aimed at Israeli civilians in the south of the country.

Following the Hamas coup in 2007, the attacks intensified and the threat grew steadily more serious as the range of the missiles extended towards the densely populated centre of Israel. Israel acted to defend its citizens (as all countries are entitled to do under the UN charter) in two ways, first by imposing a partial military blockade to try to halt the flow of weaponry from Iran and elsewhere into Gaza – a policy that has since been fully vindicated by subsequent events – and second, by a calibrated and limited military response. Note a key point in the above timeline of events: the military blockade imposed by Israel did not precede Hamas’ rocket attacks but followed them.
When those measures failed, Israel again sought – as is her right and obligation – to defend her people by launching two larger-scale operations: Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Pillar of Defence in 2012. Ceasefires were repeatedly broken by Hamas who, emboldened by the lack of international reaction combined with increasing demands on Israel to relax the blockade, grew increasingly reckless as their military capacity and firepower increased.

In the wake of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June of this year, Operation Protective Edge was launched. Hamas unleashed an unprecedented and sustained barrage of missiles – 2000 since the start of the current hostilities - at Israeli towns and cities as far north as Hadera and Haifa creating fear and havoc across the country. Every one of those missiles constitutes a war crime. The purpose of this reign of terror was clear: to disrupt normal life in Israel, bring the economy to its knees and, above all, to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. The last of these was only thwarted by the huge investment by Israel in civil defence measures – early warning systems, bombproof shelters and the Iron Dome missile defence system – that have proven largely effective. That is the reason for the imbalance of casualties between the two sides rather than any disregard for civilian safety on Israel’s part.

Israel’s defensive precautions contrast strikingly with the activities of Hamas, who have spent vast sums of money not on civil defence but the opposite – on an elaborate infrastructure of tunnels, weapon stores, missiles and rocket launchers. This was created with the sole aim of harming Israelis but that has, as a result of Israel’s obligatory defensive measures, inevitably brought death, injury and suffering to their own people. None of this human misery would have occurred had Hamas chosen to develop Gaza as a healthy and peaceful community following Israel’s departure in 2005 rather than as a renewed launching pad for violence directed at Israel. And a large number of casualties resulting from recent events would have been avoided had Hamas, like Israel, accepted at least four ceasefire proposals before and during the ground operation.

Throughout the entire period, including the current intensified conflict, Israel has permitted the continuous transfer of essential supplies such as food, clothing and medicines to be transferred from Israel to Gaza, has facilitated the entry of Gazan patients to Israel for specialist medical care, and has established a field hospital adjoining Gaza to enable injured Palestinian victims of Hamas’ war on Israel to be treated by experienced Israeli trauma surgeons. Those are not the actions of a country determined to inflict “collective punishment” or “siege” on a neighbouring people.
Neither the “siege” nor the “occupation” (Hamas’ code for the State of Israel) is the root cause of this latest conflagration nor indeed of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That is to be found in the Hamas charter and similar violently rejectionist positions – backed by actions – of extremist groups and politicians over many decades. We are disappointed, though not surprised, that Manduca et al, while claiming to be scientists, are oblivious to this verifiable reality even if it conflicts with their preconceptions. We are even more dismayed at their completely unsupportable allegations about “massacres”, “targeted weaponry used indiscriminately and on children”, the “use of gas” and “denial of entry for international humanitarian convoys.” Even by the standards of anti-Israeli rhetoric with which we have become all too familiar in recent years, the viciousness of this kind of demonization has surely sunk to new depths.

Manduca et al, while harshly criticising Israel, appear to offer understanding and even endorsement of Hamas’ extreme policies and behaviour. This is an extraordinary position for healthcare professionals to adopt. Most readers will be well aware of the true nature of that organisation. It is far from being a “political party” seeking to promote “resistance to occupation and siege.” It is a repressive and anti-Semitic group of religious fanatics, backed by Iran and Syria, which is committed, with chilling openness, to Israel’s destruction and the murder of most of her inhabitants. These aspirations are far from mere rhetoric but have been pursued with merciless cruelty over many years, in the process murdering over a thousand Israeli civilians, injuring many more and traumatising an entire nation. Nor does Hamas baulk at sacrificing its own civilians, by using young children as suicide bombers or instructing people to remain on rooftops, despite Israeli warnings of an impending strike. Little wonder it has been declared a terrorist organisation by the US and the EU as well as Israel.
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And here is a second reply from Edgar Pick, M.D.,Ph.D, Professor Emeritus, Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University

Dr. Richard Horton
Editor
The Lancet
 
Dear Dr. Horton,
 
My first scientific publication was a "Letter to the Editor" published in The Lancet vol. 279, p. 487, 1962. I was, at the time, a fifth year medical student at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem, and my pride in having a 27-lines Letter printed in such a prestigious journal, had no limits. This "feat" was repeated, when a second Letter was published in vol. 283, p. 833, 1964, at about the time of my graduation as an MD. Soon after these "contributions", I decided to pursue a career in basic bio-medical research and studied for a Ph.D. degree at the University of London under Professor John Leslie Turk (1967-1970). The Ph.D. Diploma is on the wall of my office, at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University.
It is with an uneasy feeling that I resume my correspondence with The Lancet, after a fifty years hiatus on a non-scientific subject.
1.
I read with dismay the "An open letter for the people in Gaza", by Manduca, Chalmers, Summerfield, Gilbert, and Ang + other signatories. I shall not enter into a discussion concerning the truthfulness of the letter. I am quite sure that the medico-scientific community, all over the world, will react to the claims made in the letter.
2.
I would like to protest in the most emphatic manner against the use of one of the foremost medical journals for the promotion of a political platform, independently of the nature of this platform.
3.
It was your duty, as Editor, to either reject this attempt to use the pages of a scientific journal for promoting a political agenda, or submit it to objective review. I hope that you will agree with me that the chances of this article to pass honest review successfully and be recommended for publication were zero.
4.
In addition to the blatantly nonscientific nature of the letter, the signatories of the letter have provided false information by stating that they have no "competing interests". The most elementary search for the political affiliations of all the five main signatories will reveal to the most unexperienced "googler" that these are long-time pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas activists. An indication for their extremism is that one of them (Dr. Mads Gilbert) was a justifier of the killing of innocents at 9/11.
5.
It is simply unbelievable that the Editor of the Lancet was not aware of these partisan associations. I am an experienced scientist, who spent most of his life to find answers to questions. I, thus, have to conclude that you, purposefully, ignored these associations. This is a grave infringement of the most basic rules of scientific publishing.
6.
My research into the reasons for your thoroughly unacceptable behaviour revealed that your political sympathies coincide with those of the authors. These heavily biased views were expressed repeatedly in the past. A good example is the essay, entitled
2
"Palestinians: The Crisis in Medical Care", by Richard Horton, The New York Review of Books, March 15, 2007. I have distributed to hundreds of colleagues, all over the world, the content of this biased, vitriolic anti-Israel piece of writing, for all to judge.
7.
You are, of course, entitled to your views and to publish these in The New York Review of Books. However, you are not entitled to let your political affinities influence your decisions as an Editor.
In the light of the grave infringement of your duties as an Editor, the only correct definition of which is perversion of scientific objectivity for the pursuit of a political agenda, I am asking that you resign your function as Editor of The Lancet, the prestige of which you have gravely tarnished.
 
Sincerely yours,
Edgar Pick, M.D.,Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Julius Friedrich Cohnheim Laboratory of Phagocyte Research
Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology
Sackler School of Medicine
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv 69978
Israel

cc: Mr Wisia Wedzicha, Ombudsman 

Another viewpoint

http://center.theparentscircle.org/Content.aspx?ID=133