Caught Between My Heart And My Head BY SHMUEL KATZ EDITOR
There is a very old Yiddish proverb, “Mentsh tracht un G-tt lacht,” which translates as, “Men plan and G-d laughs.” Once we started to publish this paper, people with agendas started to flood us with content—as I knew they would. We got news releases and article submissions that looked like they were prepared by propaganda offices, not journalists. Others were less obvious in their political bent, but still screamed to us as rhetoric-filled inflammatory essays with a clear agenda in mind. In discussing our editorial focus, the one thing we kept repeating in the room was, “We do not want to be the ‘I hate Arabs’ newspaper.” Regardless of our personal politics, we were quite happy to simply wave the flag and be free with our expressions of patriotism, rather than focusing on the negative. We understood that not only are many of us passionate about these issues, but they are complex ones, with no simple approach or solution. We felt that as English-speakers, our readers, regardless of their political or even religious beliefs, came to Israel to fulfill their dreams and aspirations, not as an escape from persecution or oppression as our parents and grandparents did when they fled Europe in the 1940s. Flag-waving patriotism would be something that we all could agree on. We expressed this to our feature columnists as well. “Present the facts,” we
told them, “and don’t sensationalize. Our readers are smart enough to draw conclusions without needing detailed instructions.” We were full of a righteous commitment to being evenhanded politically, allowing all sides to have a say, so long as it was respectful and intelligent. Mentsh tracht un G-tt lacht—although I don’t really think He is laughing today. More of the opposite. As members of the media, we are often sent information and images prior to their official release. So it was last motzaei Shabbat when the prerelease photos of the Itamar slaughter, which many of you have by now seen, reached our inboxes. The news was revolting; the images incomprehensible. As we put this edition of the paper to bed (we close the paper very early in the week because we go to print on Monday), we knew that we had to throw our intentions and plans into the garbage. Some things are too horrible to let pass. We all know the facts and have been reading all week about the Fogel family who were cruelly massacred in their home last Shabbat. We know about their expulsion from Gush Katif and how they finally found a new home in Itamar. We have been told over and over about the way that the animal(s) who did this set off a perimeter alarm and sneaked into a family’s home with murderous intent, simply a desire to kill Jews and revel in spilling their blood. Some of us have even had the anguish
Kineret Rises Above Lower Red Line BY GOLDIE KATZ Despite dire predictions by various Water Authority officials last fall, the winter rainfall levels have driven the level of Lake Kineret above the level known as the Lower Red Line. Historically, that level is the minimum required at the end of the rainy season in order to ensure that the dry season usage does not drain the lake below the Black Line, a level at which the Water Authority’s pumps are supposed to be shut down. However, due to conservation efforts and increased desalination capacity, dryseason usage of Lake Kineret water has been reduced to a point where the Lower Red Line no longer serves as a completely accurate benchmark for avoiding the Black Line. In fact, although the lake’s level stayed below the Lower Red Line throughout 2009, the Black Line was not reached. As of last Sunday, Lake Kineret water levels had risen 113 cm, to a level of –212.98, 2 cm above the Lower Red Line. At the same calendar date in 2010, the Lake was actually 1 cm lower, but it had
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risen by 143 cm of an eventual 177 cm by that time, a year-to-year difference of 30 cm. Additionally, while last year’s additional 34 cm of water rise through the end of the season is unusual, it is not unheard of. Both last year and this year’s rain seasons got off to late starts, with significant rainfall totals coming after January 1. If the pattern holds true, March and April rainstorms are possible. That, combined with the coming melt-off of the recently reported 1.7 meters of snow in elevated areas (Mount Herman) running off into the Kineret, could lead to an eventual rainfall total close to last year’s better-than-average numbers. With the Black Line no longer a concern for 2011 and additional desalination plants slated to come online in 2013, 2012 becomes a focal year in the water plan of the government. However, it is important that the government not become complacent in its approach. Our national demand for water will continue to grow, and we need responsible and effective plans to ensure that our supply keeps up.
of seeing the images of the Fogels’ bodies, lying in pools of blood. No matter who you are or where you live, no rational human can condone the massacre of a family as they sleep. No intelligent person can rationalize that a beast sneaking into someone’s home to butcher a husband and wife as well as two of their sons and their infant daughter could have any justification or moral imperative to its (and an animal is an it, not a he or she) actions. It is so horrific that the mind can barely absorb the information, much less make sense of it. You can claim whatever you want about oppression, occupation, aggression—it makes no difference. This was a crime against humanity, an outrage that is so clearly evil and abominable that the entire world needs to rise up and eradicate those responsible. One of my neighbors had the audacity to say to me that the attack made sense to him since it happened in the Shomron, in an area where the yishuv is surrounded by Arab villages. After all, he offered, the Arabs in Bet Shemesh only want to rob us (his words, not mine), not kill us. I reminded him of the murderous attack earlier this year one Shabbat afternoon just outside Bet Shemesh in which Arab terrorists killed an American tourist. It would be irresponsible to say that all Arabs want to kill Jews, yet sometimes—too often—it seems as if they do. And to insinuate (as did my neighbor) that anyone asked to be attacked because they live in an area surrounded by people with whom they dispute dominion over the real estate is equally— no, it is even more—irresponsible. The truth is that neither do all Arabs want to simply kill Jews nor is anyone who chooses to live anywhere within the borders of a democratic society inviting violence. So where does this all leave us? Sadly, right where we always seem to be. The world will ignore our pain and our losses and speak of the needs to look past the minor bumps in the road. They will tell us that we need to make peace in order to prevent more such deaths, that we need to deal with “moderate” Arab leaders who have denounced terror and terrorist actions in order to assure our long-term safety and security. Of course, they will overlook the fact that the Fatah-led PA’s armed wing took responsibility for this horror. It is as if President Obama would issue a statement renouncing the massacre of a farmer and his family by the armed militia of the Democratic Party of the USA (there is no such thing). They will dismiss the fact that they are passing out
candies in Gaza in celebration, just as they do with every heinous attack, including the 9/11 Twin Towers suicide attacks. They will treat us with the same disdain that they always do. Our side will declare unilateral moves (and has done so) to demonstrate that we will not be deterred from choosing our actions independently of the pressure of terrorists or the world. Those who wish us harm will seek to do more and more harm and inflict more and more pain in a fervor of passionate hatred and regionally supported terror. After my absolute loathing of those that carried out these murders and the murders themselves, the thing that I hate the most is that I have no answers. There are so many opinions and so many smart people who have offered them that the soup is muddled and murky. There are no simple solutions. It would be easy to simply say, “Kill them all” or “Kick them out—they have other places to go and we don’t” or any one of hundreds of other cookie-cutter solutions that have no glimmer of actually happening, much less working. This issue is so divisive, not just here, but worldwide, that such unilateral solutions are impossible, no matter if we believe them to be just or not. We sit a few days before Purim. It is a holiday that celebrates our victory over enemies that legislated our annihilation. In that time, there were Jews who lost their lives, victims of bloodthirsty enemies who were filled with zeal at getting a head start on the edict of extinction. I know that I speak for all of us in the hope that our generation sees a Purim-like redemption from our enemies, those who wish to eliminate us from the world. Our sins in participating in the feast of Achashverosh, a feast in which direct and indirect references to the conquest of Yerushalayim and the destruction of the Bet HaMikdash were made, helped in no small part to prompt the heavenly decree of death for the Jewish people of that era. Indeed, it was the teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah—which was prompted not only by the news of the edict, but also by the fear generated by the news of the early victims of Haman and his minions—that led to the reversal of fortune in which we were, as a nation, saved. It may be naive on my part, but I truly hope and pray that the Fogels’ lives are the last sacrifice of our era required by G-d for us to achieve the final redemption. As for us at Koleinu, all I can say is that this was a very hard week to not be the “I hate Arabs” newspaper. I am not even sure if we made it. They have made it so hard not to hate.