ceasefire????

It seems like Israel really likes these one sided deals in Gaza. They walked out of the Gaza strip without an agreement, and that is what brought us this war. They are now walking out of gaza again without an agreement, and you can bet that they won't have a problem shooting rockets at us as soon as the last soldier leaves the strip, if they wait that long.

What I heard from the PM was laughable, given the history. "If they fire on us we will respond severely." I laugh at that statement even as I write it. You can almost hear Rabin saying, "if they shoot at us with the weapons we gave them then we will go in and take them back." Or how about Sharon, "if they dare to shoot one rocket at us after we leave Gaza, we will take it back." In other words, Olmert has decided that we've killed too many bad guys for now, so we will give them time to stock up on more weapons so that they are more prepared for the next round.

The northern border has been quiet for the past couple days and we're hoping it will remain that way.

Galilee sporadic attacks

Well I guess that free punch was just the beginning. Rockets were shot at Kiryat Shmona and my wife said some hit Kabri as well, those that was not reported on the news. I think it means they are getting nervous that we are nearing our goal in Gaza. They are keeping us off-balance at the moment.
We had just offered to watch my brother's kids while they go to have another baby. They aren't sure if the north is the best place to send the kids to right now. They live in peaceful, quiet Samaria.

I think we are sending some artillery into southern Lebanon to show them that we aren't complete wussies, but we haven't attacked Beirut yet. UNIFIL is still scratching their heads as they try to figure out what the best way to condemn Israel for getting rockets shot at herself again. This is supposed to be a group that is charged with shooting the bad guys. This is their entire purpose of existence. Lets hope they can figure out which way the barrel should be pointing before Israel has to go in and do the job itself.

ctrl Alt up arrow

In Windows XP sometimes the screen gets turned in the wrong direction. So you are looking at it sideways or upside down. The easiest way to deal with this problem is to physically turn the monitor on to its side or upside down and then it will be the correct orientation. Another way of doing it is by clicking ctrl+Alt+up arrow. The orientation was most probably changed that way to begin with (clicking ctrl+alt+other arrow).

Sometimes life is like that too. You do something small and find that suddenly your orientation is way off. The easiest way of dealing with it is to adapt to your new orientation, such as turning your monitor upside down. The more correct way of correcting it is to figure out how to get your orientation back the way you want it to be and hopefully on the way figure out how it got screwed up.

In the JPost today there was a story about a teenager (17 year old) who was convicted of killing his mother and wounding his father because they took away his video game. The judge said that he firmly believed that the boy did not realize that by killing his parents they would be gone forever, however he denied an insanity plea and said the boy was responsible for his actions. Talk about needing a reorientation.

UPDATE: I just realized that while this story was in the jpost, it did not happen in Israel.

Haifa was not hit

Haifa was not hit. Don't worry we're all ok. This is the message we passed along to my wife's grandma after she got ver worried when she heard that Haifa was hit yesterday. I was here, nothing happened. At least nothing out of the ordinary - other then me buying shoes, which I don't normally do.

There is a push now to ban Balad, one of the Arab political parties, from participating in the upcoming Knesset elections. The party's platform includes armed struggle against the state and the destruction of its Jewish character. Kadima is trying to look more and more right wing because of the war is actually going to support the motion, while Labor is going to vote against.

The natives are getting restless and there will probably be more riots if the motion actually passes. the last time they did this the supreme court invalidated the vote and let them participate.

Balad's official response to the proceedings are that they stand by their platform.

The question is should a democracy allow a voice calling for the state's destruction? If the majority of people vote that they prefer a dictatorship to a democracy, do they take away their own inherent right to be self-deterministic? When the majority of German's voted for Hitler, did that make the actions that he did, which he promised before he was elected, moral? Or moral for the German people? Or is democracy not equal to morality?
If the majority of Gazans vote to annihilate Israel, does that make them all the enemy and remove from them any status of innocent civilian?

Deep thoughts by Sim

shoes

I finally decided the time had come for new shoes. My New Balance of 1+ years were completely destroyed after having served me faithfully for about 2 years. I showed them to the guy in the shoe store and he said he had never seen New Balance look like that before.
I am very hard on shoes, I am a two pair of shoes kind of guy, 1 for shabbos, holidays and other assorted looking fancy occassions and the other for everything else. I also have sandals, but I don't consider them shoes. I went to the Grand Canyon today, the big mall in Haifa (Canyon is Hebrew for mall). I explained to the guy in the store that I am hard on shoes and I need the entire front to be solid leather, not netting or material as I would rip right through that. He had never heard of anyone doing that before but I chalk that up to his inexperience.

He had some Air Jordans, which he said were the best quality that he had, but I told him I had a problem buying those. He was a bit confused, so I told him I was from Detroit. He told me that it shouldn't be so personal, because Jordan would have played for whatever team gave him the most money. Israelis do not understand sports. In the end he didn't have any other quality shoes, so I bought these. I feel like my feet should throw up.

leftists suck

It looks like the war chants were a bit early. One barrage, a war does not make. I think they were testing the water or throwing a free punch.

I want to wish a happy birthday to my little sister who turned 18 yesterday.

Anyways, for shabbos we are heading off to Bet-shemesh to spend it with the BIL. This was planned in advance and is not related to the rocket fire. Bet Shemesh is within firing range of Gaza, it is about 40 KM away, though they haven't been hit yet. Hamas probably wants to avoid the Tel Aviv area because they know that if the lefties have to go into their bomb shelter even one time it will kill the support they enjoy there. Udi Aloni suggested, in a ynetnews article, that Israelis should happily accept the rockets from Hamas as it is our fault that they are unhappy. The entire family is a bunch of nutcases. Someone should check into how much of his monthly income comes from Europeans.

TrainTalk pointed me towards a eureferndum blog post which discussed how Hamas is not only using women and children as human shields, but is actively trying to get them killed so as to maximize their pity power. I think it's important to see exactly who we are dealing with.

sonic booms???

My wife heard a boom earlier and she called me to ask if there was anything on the news. I told her that she was the news and there wouldn't be anything on for at least 10 minutes. I listened to the news afterwards and there was a live report of someone from Lebanon who saw the rocket take off towards Israel. After that there was a report from Nahariya that rockets had landed. The reports were from someone who was "very experienced" according to the radio. The Home Front Command denied the reports and said with absolute certainty that there was no second barrage and the noise that was heard was from sonic booms.

I came home early today because my wife had an appointment with my older daughter and I have to get the baby from gan. It just turned out to be on Katyusha day, luckily for us.

activating the war blog

I've been very lax at blogging recenty. This is mostly because I have completely run out of time. I fired my system admin at work recently, and now I have his work to do on top of mine. That and the rest of life has just left me with no time at all.

This morning my wife called and asked if she should take the kids home because rockets hit in our area. They haven't hit our village yet, but it's probably only a matter of time. Two minutes after I hung up with her, Jameel called to find out if we were still alive.

During warfare I feel a greater responsibility to blog then during peacetime (or non-active war, as is the general state in Israel). This is to keep people informed about what is really going on. The media outlets generally have such garbage and try to equate our suffering to their suffering. There is no comparison. Their suffering is self-inflicted and our suffering is inflicted by them. In other words they inflict suffering on everyone. It's about time we wiped them out.

We are still working out our family war plan, and I will keep you updated as the war progresses.

At the moment, the kids are all in school and we are waiting for instructions from the warroom as to whether we are taking them home or not. For the moment everything is just tense.

It's a good thing I only planned on working half a day today.