On Gaza

I am the child of Iranian refugees who lost everything, even their children, to Islamists like Hamas. My ability to write these words is a defiance of the horrors of Hamas and Islamism, which I consider one and the same. The victims of Hamas’s terror, the victims of all Islamist violence including my family, deserve my voice and I’ll always speak up for them.

My grandparents converted to a religion even more marginalized in Iran, Baha’i, for whom it is illegal to practice, inherit property, or attend university. Whether courageous and savvy, or bold and lucky, my grandma sent my dad to school in England, paving a path out of soon-to-be Islamist Iran. They left behind all property and savings, including my optometrist grandpa’s glasses factories, to pursue a life better than pariahs born on the wrong side of the fence. I still remember getting glasses every birthday despite being the only Adell with 20/20 vision.

My mom relinquished custody of my half-brother and half-sister to escape an abusive child marriage and moved to the US while my siblings endured the Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran Hostage Crisis, the US revoked my mom’s visa and deported her to the UK, where she was visiting her Baha’i boyfriend. The UK granted her asylum and she married that boyfriend, eventually reuniting the family in the US many years later. She documented her story in “Leaving Darkness”, her indictment of Sharia law.

I was born of conflict, and everything I know about conflict, I’ve seen reflected in the Middle East. I’ve long understood that the Middle East is the ultimate test of whether we can transcend conflict, or whether conflict can unwittingly subsume even the most inoculated of us and fragment our humanity into something smaller, weaker, and inhumane.

“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” So it goes with my Middle East major at UVA, my trips to Israel and Palestine, my work in refugee camps and now as Chair at Children in Conflict.

While the history is complex, the answer to this test is not. It’s as obvious as a mountain, unseen through narrow geology or selective focus, but by beholding each story in this mountain of suffering equally. How we answer this test depends on whether we can unlearn our subhuman categories and see cruelty of any color as simplistically as it should be seen – whether we can reimagine this conflict through the eyes of a child – and recognize that neither Hamas’s horrific attacks nor Israel’s brutal response can ever be justified.

Now on the outside looking in, I’m reminded why my family can count itself far more fortunate than the countless families reeling from loss today. So what was it that allowed my family to defy what Islamism would have me be?

What saved my family and truly defied the Islamist worldview was a framework that recognized our humanity, categorically and without category, as more than an expendable means to a messianic end. Without the humanists who fought for secular, multiethnic liberal democracies, and the humanitarians who painstakingly built universal international institutions like asylum under the Refugee Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I’d be as trapped as Gaza’s children are today.

It’s those who help the victims, not those who hunt the victimizers, that truly undermine brutality. We should be helping families like mine and children like me defy what Hamas would have them be. Instead, we are unwittingly endorsing Hamas’s sectarian worldview and reenacting their script with a mirrored brutality that can be just as ugly. With each kidnapped, strip-searched, orphaned, dead or dismembered child – with every rebuttal to aid and protection for each and every child – we are failing, and Hamas’s brutality is winning.

Still, I maintain my hope that our community can stand apart and transcend this conflict rather than be subsumed by it. I hope we can reimagine this conflict through the eyes of a child, through which none of these horrors can be justified. Only adults impose subhuman categories that rationalize murdering, kidnapping, burning, bombing, and burying children alive, which is why through the eyes of a child, there are two sides far more consequential than our conventional “two sides”: those who agree that no child should be a part of war, and those who rationalize otherwise.

I know where Hamas stands, and sadly, I know where some purportedly anti-Hamas stand – curiously compatible in disparately weighing dead children as a means to an end. Make no mistake, protecting future generations from the horrors of Hamas is a righteous end. But if you wouldn’t supply these means by sacrificing children you know, then it’s time to confront whether Hamas has successfully shut your eyes to the equal value of human lives.

Still, I hope that even the most vindictive perspective, when confronted by the suffering of a child, can be persuaded to recall the lessons humanists and humanitarians have painstakingly enshrined in international law: collective punishment, starvation as a weapon of war, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are crimes no preceding brutality or lofty goal can justify. Regardless of history or adversary, we must not compromise on a redline that protects each and every child: No whataboutism, no excuses, no recriminations – no child should be a part of war.

Gaza is home to over 2 million people – more than Manhattan – almost half of whom are children. Over 1% or 28,000 have been killed and 3% or 67,500 injured, 70% of whom are women and children. 85% are displaced and all are under “complete siege” with an unreliable safe zone of 8 barren square miles – roughly the section of Manhattan containing Central Park.

Most have no home to return to, with 70% of homes and 20% of agricultural land damaged or destroyed. The World Food Programme (WFP) reports over 50% have severe levels of hunger and over 90% have inadequate nutrition. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports virtually all Gazans skip meals daily, and in half of households, family members go full days without food. Adults are starving so children can eat.

The senseless deaths become truly staggering when we consider the deaths we can’t count, as public health scholars estimate indirect deaths can outnumber direct deaths by more than 15:1. With some simple math, if 40% of the 24,620 deaths are children, then at 100 days into the conflict, even a 2:1 ratio would make the WHO’s warning of a child killed every 10 minutes a grim underestimate.

I’m a pedantic economist who loves nothing more than quibbling over statistics, but in this case, that would be a distraction designed to obscure the obvious: Children are dying in numbers that defy comprehension, and we are failing to protect them. And if none of this crosses your redline, then it’s time to ask yourself if you have one.

Through the eyes of a child trying to make sense of this suffering, history may be a sensible explanation but it’s a nonsense excuse, because there is no excuse. Through my family, education, and work, I’ve learned something about those who “rationalize otherwise”, and about the cycles of violence that unify the innocent victims of Hamas, Lehava, and all stripes of supremacists, white, Islamist, and Jewish alike.

Three successive dispossessed generations of my family – Jews, bourgeois, and Baha’is – weren’t victimized by warring tribes. They fell prey to victimizers that were blinded by the lie of warring tribes, and were subsumed by the primacy of some subhuman category below our shared humanity. My family and countless others fell victim to the lie that human rights – peace, freedom, and security – can be sustained exclusively rather than universally, and by one category’s supremacy rather than transcendence above categories.

And therein lies the ultimate compatibility of Hamas with every stripe of supremacist, from Gaza to Lydda to my alma mater in Charlottesville, Virginia. Supremacists prioritize their category instead of humanity, contrive opposing categories, and counterbalance disparately weighted dead children, all in the name of messianic delusions that are somehow never satisfied. Supremacists’ opposing categories – their primacy, oppositionality, and even ontology – are a lie. The wisdom of a child – a wisdom within ourselves – can see through that lie, but with each dead child, we are killing that wisdom.

Sadly, we are all victims of that lie, a lie we’ve all heard and may have even felt compelled to tell precisely when its adherents have harmed us most. As Yuval Noah Harari explains:

Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about and what my particular role is in the cosmic drama. This role makes me a part of something bigger than myself, and gives meaning to all my experiences and choices.

The supremacist story fits the bill but blinds us to the truth. And the truth is that there are no conflicting categories, no “two sides” more salient and enduring, more predictive and explanatory, than the two sides of any and all conflict the world over: universalists and supremacists, humanitarians and sectarians, humanists and dehumanizers.

Confronted by this collective realization, conflict as we know it cannot survive. This radical reframing puts too many of us on the same side and leaves too few to perpetuate the lie. This is why opposing sides will rally like allies against the threat of a new narrative, and why the most shocking attacks come not at the height of war, but at the precipice of peace.

This is why an Islamist killed Anwar Sadat, a Zionist killed Yitzhak Rabin, a Hindu nationalist killed Mahatma Gandhi, and the Nation of Islam killed Malcolm X. This is why Baruch Goldstein attacked to undermine the Oslo Accords, why Hamas attacked to thwart Saudi-Israel normalization, and how supremacists depend on each other to defend their lie.

If not for this well-versed final act, starved of mutually reinforcing human sacrifices, conflict would simply wither and die. Yet somehow, despite this recurring glimpse into supremacists’ compatibility, interdependence, and reveal by fratricide of their true two sides, this final act so often scores an encore. And amid a resurgence of suffering that only supremacists wanted, amid collective disillusionment with another failed attempt for peace, supremacists notch another excuse for their ready rebuttal: “It’s complicated.”

I majored in Foreign Affairs of the Middle East. My advisor was an architect of the Camp David Accords and literally wrote the book on the Peace Process. Sure, it’s complicated in that there are a lot of names, dates, and events. You can study a lifetime and still only learn a fraction of them. But despite what ethnic cleansers tell you about how little you understand, there’s no threshold of names and dates where you realize thousands of dead children makes sense.

It’s not complicated. That’s an obfuscation meant to keep you silent and complicit. It’s not complicated, especially not for children. “It’s complicated” is the chosen narrative of supremacists to indoctrinate children into roles as jailers and prisoners in a real-life Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes meets Stanford Prison Experiment, and to answer the obvious childish question: “Why?”

It’s not complicated when you see the narrative for what it is: a sham. The two sides aren’t Israel vs. Gaza, Israeli vs. Palestinian, or Arab vs. Jew, and by design, you’ll never gain moral clarity with that narrative because it’s a false narrative. No particular two sides will ever provide the moral clarity and simplicity of conflict’s true and enduring two sides: those who defend human rights for all, and those who rationalize otherwise. If you hate Hamas for being the latter, be wary you don’t mirror their supremacist lie.

Universal human rights, the equal value of human lives, and aid and protection for each and every child – these reflect a morality compatible with the innocence of a child, through whose eyes all rationalizations for inflicting pain essentially look the same. We all recognize there’s something special about a child. Children are born with an innate sense of morality, but a child is not born thinking in tribes. A child precedes the notion of a tribe.

For a child, difference is more likely to prompt curiosity than revulsion. Children haven’t yet accumulated the baggage of national myths. They’re not just more innocent than us; they’re smarter than us. That’s why, when eight-year-old Abdullah Jabr says “War is stupid, and I want it to end”, we should listen to him. And I think we’re all in this community because we agree.

No one, not even an eight-year-old, is so naïve to think pacifism will work in a world with ISIS, Hamas, Lehava, or Kahanism – a world with Islamist, Jewish, or any other brand of supremacist. But we need to stand with Abullah Jabr, defend his childhood, and agree with his anti-supremacist premise as our shared goal: “War is stupid, and we want it to end.”

So how do we help Abdullah Jabr? And just as important, how do we help the Israeli children trapped in Gaza like four-year-old Ariel Bibas and the youngest Hamas hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas? You can donate so Children in Conflict and War Child can provide psychosocial support and child-friendly programs. But more importantly, you can do your part to make the whole world a child-friendly space: Say loudly and proudly why you donate.

While our partners are calling for a ceasefire, I personally think “ceasefire” is just another word without nuance that a condemned child will never know. Just say what you believe: Call for a hostage release, call for an end to Hamas, but please, call to protect the children. If I’ve convinced you of anything, I hope it’s that there is no conflict in speaking for Gaza’s children too. Call for something, anything, compatible with what you’d wish for your own children, because we know it’s not this. Prioritize your shared humanity, demand human rights for all, and call for an end to collective punishment, starvation as a weapon of war, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure – crimes no preceding brutality or lofty goal can justify.

Reframe the “two sides” to what gravely matters for all children: those who agree that no child should be a part of war, and those who rationalize otherwise; and thus recognize that neither Hamas’s horrific attacks nor Israel’s brutal response can ever be justified. Reject disparately weighted dead children as an acceptable means to an end, refuse to let conflict subsume your humanity and shut your eyes to the equal value of human lives, and never compromise on a redline that protects each and every child: No child should be a part of war. Ever.

democracy means nothing.

i wrote this quite awhile ago about this article: israel's fading democracy. i've referenced it a few times since and realized it's really worth posting here.



i've been on this message for so long, constantly biting my tongue around fervent supporters of israel...

democracy means nothing. liberal democracy means everything, liberalism being far more important than democracy. you can gerrymander and manipulate an illiberal democracy to get the most vile and tyrannical governments imaginable, which is exactly the kind of government you get from hamas, hezbollah, and likud, where some citizens, be they sunni, shi'a, or jewish, are more equal than others.

in the last paragraph, he speaks directly to me: "And for all the cynics who are smiling sarcastically as they read these lines, I can only say to Americans, 'Yes, we still can,' and to Israelis, 'If you will it, it is no dream.'"

to which i would unsarcastically reply, "Not as long as America enables apartheid, which it does and it will. Your dream is dead."

world wrap.

welcome to the world wrap, a compact taste of smashkanistan. and holy world news! kinda too much to get to, so here's some snippets. (speaking of holy, i'm in lynchburg. it's funny here.)

quick tidbits: arab unrest, petraeus nominated to head the cia, palestinian reconciliation, bernanke holds a press conference, obama releases his birth certificate, and i'm getting kind of fat.

first stop, arab unrest. i heart the arab spring, but the end result is yet to be seen. number one threat? the thirst for reprisal. it disgusts me, and it does a disservice to all those still struggling for freedom by incentivising brutal suppression of the revolts. with the exception of the dictators who go out fighting, let the leaders step down and disappear. ponder policies, not punishments. focus on organizing viable liberal political parties, or before you know it, the islamists will be winning the elections won by the blood of brave liberals. (get it? like liberals won the elections being held, but the islamists won the election's votes. it's good writing, it's just way over your head.)

i hope the arab spring inspires iran to rise up; i hope it creates liberal forms of government in it's wake; and i hope it exposes the cheap myth that israel is anything but a joke of a gerrymandered ethnocracy by showing the world that zionism is just as (if not more) threatened by true liberalism than by islamism. new liberal democratic arab regimes will necessarily come into conflict with israel's apartheid, and if america wants to make up for years of pampering arab dictators that play nice with israel in spite of their arab populations and palestinians, it should do everything it can to support the uprisings while walking the fine line of acknowledging that this is an arab revolt, not an american war.

example: libya. kudos for intervening, keep it up. keep it up how? by nominating petraeus to head the cia, that's how.

next stop, palestinian reconciliation. if you must learn your lesson again, learn them again. you can't trust hamas and you can't trust islamism. if reconciliation lasts, then it lasts... but i don't think it will.

and now to uncle ben...



“I think every central banker understands that keeping inflation low and stable is absolutely essential to a successful economy and we will do what’s necessary to ensure that happens,” said Bernanke.

i took a little pause to watch the first fed chairman press conference in history, and here's what i learned: nothing new. because it wasn't meant for people who understand the fed. in fact, this stop is also the transfer station for obama's birth certificate, because the audience for both events was the mass hysteria of ignorant idiots. bernanke was simply reiterating in a more public and popular forum what the fed does for those that don't seem to get it. the fed uses open market operations (buying and selling securities) to fulfill the fine line of the fed's dual mandate: stable prices and full employment. stable prices means the fed will fight high inflation just as it fights the threat of deflation.

so now that we know obama isn't a foreign agent of a shadowy world government and bernanke doesn't lead a cabal of global bankers planning to enslave us all, all the birthers and tea partiers can go home and watch their last glenn beck show, right? of course they won't. they'll perpetuate the alternate reality in which they make some semblance of sense.



anddd that's a wrap. eat it and weep. (even if like me, you're getting kind of fat.)

a former home.

I have four daughters. The eldest is twelve years old and the youngest is one year old. I am married to Muhammad Fahmi A-Rimawi, who was arrested on suspicion of aiding the cell that killed Minister Ze'evi.

In the early hours of Wednesday [24 October 2001], I was awakened by the sound of gunfire and helicopters. I looked out my window and was surprised to see many soldiers on the road that is about ten meters from our house. I heard knocking at the door. It was Shadi, one of our neighbors. He said that the soldiers wanted me to come outside. My daughters woke up and started crying because of the loud noise. I went outside to the soldiers - I was barefoot and in pajamas. The soldiers heard the sound of my daughters crying and asked me to get everyone out of the house quickly. Shadi went to get my parents and my brother's wife from the top floor.

At the same time, my brother 'Abd al-Muhsan and my sister's son Iham stood outside facing the wall, their hands tied. I quickly took my daughters outside. The rest of our family who lives in the building with us also exited. The younger children cried, and we all stood around barefoot and in our pajamas because the army told us that we had to leave within five minutes, and threatened to blow up the house. I embraced my children, because it was early in the morning and very cold. The army took my sister's son and my brother away in a jeep, and the rest of us remained outside. The soldiers surrounded us and aimed their guns at us but did not fire.

The soldiers sent a dog into the building and tens of soldiers followed it in. Meanwhile, we sat outside and heard the heavy firing and saw helicopters circling above. Once in a while, armored vehicles passed by on the street. The children continued to cry and wet their pants, because the soldiers would not let them to go into the house to use the bathroom. Only at 6:30 A.M. did the army leave the building. I took my daughters inside, helped them shower, and made something to eat. Outside, the firing stopped and the soldiers left.

At 9:00 A.M., the soldiers came back, bringing my sister's son Iham with them. They took my sister, Ifham, out of the house and questioned her for an hour. Her son, Hamdi Quran, is one of the men suspected of assassinating Minister Ze'evi. They asked her about the mobile phone that she had, and she said that she had sold it. They called me and asked about the mobile phone, and about the whereabouts of Hamdi. They threatened that if we did not give them the information, they would demolish the house. I said that I did not know where he was. The interrogation lasted half an hour. Then the soldiers ordered Ifham and me to go back into the house. We were very frightened and decided to leave the house and stay with neighbors. Only my father remained in his apartment.

At 6:20 P.M. on the same day, a large force of soldiers came and took my father out of the house. We were still at the neighbor's house. The soldiers circled the house for fifteen minutes. I do not know exactly what they were doing. They left the area, and two minutes later I heard the sound of an explosion. The house went up in flames.

All four apartments in the building were completely demolished. The soldiers would not let us take anything from the building. Before moving in with the neighbors I had managed to grab only a few pieces of the children's clothing. Now I am living with my four daughters in my uncle's house nearby, and I hope that they will help me rebuild my house.

Zahara Ahmad Yusef a-Rimawi is 33 years old, married and a mother of four. The testimony was taken by Raslan Mahagna on 29 October 2001.

...

blockade part deux?

uh oh, here comes rachel corrie!

blockades and blocked aid.

for all those gazans stuck between israel and hamas, im at a loss.



ive been pondering the israeli seizure of gaza-bound aid ships, aka the blockade and the blocked aid all day and i want to say i know what needs to be done, but the truth is... right now i have no idea.

i still remember the miserable day hamas won the elections in january 2006 and then the gruesome coup when hamas took control of gaza in june 2007.

of course i was seething at all the stupid policies i thought led to the situation in the first place, but all anger and blame aside, the question was and still is how to liberate gaza. i want to see hamas gone as much as anyone, but there is no way around it: gaza is firmly in the hands of islamists and simultaneously besieged by zionists. now what?

well that all depends on the the answer to this question: is the blockade working? i wish i knew the answer, but right now it looks like an epic fail.

oh how memorial day makes me yearn for the moral clarity of hindsight, but alas... gaza is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and as far as i can tell, there are no easy answers for gaza's 1.5 million people.

happy memorial day.

skewed views from the national review.

just a little something on andrew maccarthy's national review article, aka last post's pleasant surprise... i thought his commentary on the israeli-palestinian conflict was so laughably oversimplified and infantile that i couldnt resist ridiculing it.

"Petraeus is echoing the narrative peddled incessantly by leftists in the government he serves and by Islamists in the countries where he works. According to that narrative, Israel’s plight is not a struggle for survival against immovable foes spurred by an Islamist ideology that must be discredited and defeated."

did he just say islamists peddle the narrative that israel is not struggling for survival against them? oh well that's just awesome. has this guy heard of hamas? cuz i'm pretty sure thats their whole raison d'etre. im going to go ahead and assume that was just poor writing and he didn't actually mean to say that.

ok so let me just state that quote inversely to get at what hes saying... according to this guy, the correct narrative would be: israels plight is a struggle for survival against immovable foes spurred by an islamist ideology.

hm... if by "immovable foes" he means the 4+ million refugees under de facto israeli government control, ok i'll give it to him. short of genocide or mass expulsion, they are indeed immovable. (by the way, googling mass expulsion is entertainingly relevant.)

but he lost me on the islamist ideology part. sure, there are islamists like the misguided supporters of hamas, but if we could wave a wand and make all the islamists simply disappear tomorrow, israel's plight would remain, so obviously it can't be that simple.

there would still be millions of people, arabs, muslims, christians, and secularists alike that would be an anathema to a "jewish and democratic" state of israel. and how does his argument account for all the people that advocate a single secular democratic state in all the land controlled by israel? maybe he doesn't know islamists actually aren't israel's only detractors.

"To the contrary, this view holds, it is the result of a mere political conflict."

ok, inversely: israel's plight is not the result of a mere political conflict.

universal suffrage for everyone under israeli control would make israel's basic law, which states that israel is a "jewish and democratic state," a contradiction... jews would be outnumbered. israel's basic law theoretically necessitates unequal democratic rights... sure sounds like a political problem to me.

ok no more quotes. i can and actually did go on for a few more, but you get the picture.

i mean... simple hypotheticals (like the elimination of islamism) make it obvious andrew mccarthy's idea of israel's plight is absurd, so why is the national review going with this crap? it always seems weird to me how conservatives have the same recurring problem of reducing complex issues into binary.

the idea that islamism is the crux of israel's plight is wishful thinking. but it's so disconnected from reality that if you're going to pretend complete and utter defeat of islamism (which would be nice) will solve the israeli-palestinian conflict and bring peace in the middle east, you might as well also pretend santa claus is bringing peace in the middle east in a bag next christmas. or perhaps more fitting for the national review, that jesus is bringing peace as soon as israel conquers enough land.

painting the israeli-palestinian conflict as a simple good vs evil battle where either israel or the terrorists win makes it easier for an idiot to understand, so i guess i can see why an idiot would want to understand it in just that way... unfortunately for this guy and the national review, reality is sometimes just a tad more complex.

petraeus on israel.

i probably shouldve assumed such an intelligent person with such an intimate understanding of the middle east would share my view's on america's israel problem.

i've always agreed with and supported petraeus on iraq, but i guess the thought of petraeus on israel had never even crossed my mind, so this was a pretty pleasant surprise.

if petraeus ever gets near politics, this pretty much guarantees that hes going to have my full support, because guess what... he's right.

charles freeman.

sorry to see you go.

(mother fuckers...)

a closer look at what america lost.

waltz with bashir.

i have to get this...





ps... hit the high quality button in the lower right. its prettier.

the middle east getting graphic.

wow. (via mr bren.)

ps... some days are better than others. i feel like hamas just won again.

my only hope is that peres will give livni the first shot at forming a coalition. otherwise it looks like abbas and fayyad will have these tools as partners for peace.

if you look back in my blogs, ive been dreading the return of netanyahu since oh say forever... netanyahu and lieberman make those "no partner for peace" claims during arafats time seem almost hopeful.

lieberman, whose speeches are often segwayed with chants of "death to arabs," is now kingmaker for "americas strongest ally" in the middle east.

good luck obama... americas been making some interesting friends.

(ouch.)

gaza.

if you're short on time, watch from about 6 to 9 minutes in.



dead on. history has passed peace by.

want more? listen from about 12 to 14 minutes.

the idea that israel is a democracy is the biggest joke ever told. (not the funniest.) israel is an apartheid state. the number of people under israeli rule without basic "democratic" rights is rapidly approaching a majority. it's the demographic time bomb.

how do israelis rationalize this? they call those under israeli rule without rights "occupied," while the ruling class, soon to be the minority, are "citizens." occupied implies a temporary state of affairs, and so this claim is only legitimate to the extent that the israelis actually intend to leave the occupied territories.

in the days of yitzhak rabin, the occupation claim might have been credible. but the extremists took care of that, and we got sharon the butcher instead. not that there isn't any decent leaders in the middle east anymore, but they're mostly sidelined by the hardline.

every day, with every new settler and every new settlement, the occupation claim gets harder and harder to believe. no, the settlers don't represent the majority, but they are the minority in de facto control of a de jure apartheid state.

listen from about 20 minutes onward.



the islamist pm of turkey is rumored to have once said "democracy is like a train. you get on it, and get off once you reach your destination." israel is on that same train, and america is being strung along for the ride.

boats.

hey so apparantly theres a squirrel who likes crunk. everytime i play trillville he sits on my window sill right by the speaker and eats nuts or whatever squirrels do. im trying to get him to diversify by mixing it up with sugar in the marmalade, but it doesnt seem to be working... he usually leaves until i play some crunk again.

so israeli elections are tomorrow. my votes for balad, but for practicalities sake im rooting for kadima. anything to keep netenyahu out of power and derail prophecy. i hope i hope i hope the right doesnt get their 61 threshold to block a more peaceful coalition... but if my predictions are right, the peace liking types are fucked.

best party ever i think... if you came, thanks for coming... i desperately want to do that again. was that the biggest party of the year? i measure these things in kegs and 2 kegs and a gin bucket got kicked like halfway through the night, though to be fair one of the two was a pony keg... it was up there... adrian and han pretty much got in a fight, after which clay and han almost got in a fight. (i shouldnt have played crunk shit.) andre bet sam and brendan money to do naughty things. (they failed but it sounds funny.) my room has footprints on the ceiling. (?!) some drunk guy with a prosthetic claw passed out in the alleyway on the side of my house. (we named him the claw.) and yeh... i think thats about the extent of my memory but wow. i need speakers for the next party cuz the dance parties in my room are getting destructive. im all sad cuz my whole week was leading up to that and now i feel aimless and lost... maybe i should just start planning another immediately? hellll yeah.

12 Comments

sharon.

i have on multiple occasions given you kids my perdictions for a huge war in the middle east... through blog or conversation...

the earliest documentation of my prediction is september 13, 2002. i formed it probably a few months prior to writing it down so that i had proof for when it happened.

my prediction reads "death of prime minister (sharon?) leads to replacement by netanyahu, who will begin war."

now heres a quote from slate. "If he calculates his moves wisely, Netanyahu is the most likely candidate to gain from the new political situation." (http://www.slate.com/id/2133835/fr/rss/)

now heres more background. since i said that... in chronological order...

arafat (leador of palestine) died, creating a power vacuum in palestine that abbas (his succesor and supporter of peace) has been unable to control. hamas (a militant palestinian group that wants war with israel) has been steadily gaining in palestinian elections. now in israel, sharon was formerly in the same party as netanyahu (likud party) and therefore they were not political competitors. sharon implemented a withdrawal from occupied palestinian territories (gaza withdrawal) which split the likud party between his supporters (and withdrawal supporters) and netenyahu with his supporters (opposing the withdrawal.) they became competitors. sharon and his supporters formed a new party, which became the leading kadima party. this made netenyahu leader of the now second most powerful party, likud, and therefore sharons main competitor for prime minister. now, sharon is dead. elections are in three months.

heres the quote again. "If he calculates his moves wisely, Netanyahu is the most likely candidate to gain from the new political situation."

here is what i think will happen now.

just before he got dead, sharon ended a long period of relative peace by bombing and such in palestinian territories. so just before he died, peace got pooped on. now sharons replacement in the kadima party will probably prove uncharasmatic and unpopular, and the party may fall apart. even if it doesnt, i dont think it will have the political support to win the election. who does that leave? netenyahu. i think we all know that people usually respond to extremism by becoming more extremist... so at this same time, either palestine will react to israels hardliner (netenyahu) by turning hardline themselves and electing hamas. (prowar.) or hamas may be elected independently, causing israel to react by turning hardline and electing netenyahu. (prowar.) either way... both sides will fall to hardline prowar types... netenyahu will probably want to undo the gaza withdrawal by reinvading and taking it by force anddd sooo... viola! war.

i hope someday someone realizes how dead on my predictions are. they might declare me a prophet... or at least buy me an ice cream. its pretty ridiculously frustrating that ive probably made one of the most incredibly accurate predictions in history, but only single digit amounts of my friends will ever realize it because people are fucking retarded.

if you do understand... you, like me, are probably getting scared at how perfectly everything is falling into place. (and maybe want to declare me a prophet or at least buy me some ice cream.) admittedly, there is one huge discrepency in my predictions... i always thought sharon would be assasinated by an extremist... but this works too.

with that said... fuck all of you.

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predictions.

so remember back in the day when i blogged that thing about how a jewish extremist would assainate sharon and netanyahu would take over and slaughter everyone? well im pretty afraid of how my own prediction is coming true... back then i didnt even know how, but since then, the settlers all want sharon dead because of the gaza evacuation, netanyahu quit his cabinet and is running against him, and the militant group hamas might win a political victory in the next palestinian elections, making both sides hardline fuckers, and making war easy. everything is falling into place, and i am afraid.

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and now.

time for another round of ashkans perdictions for the year 2006. sharon will be killed by a jewish extremist and netanyahu will take over the government. war and killing and death and stuff. this has been brought to you by the letter r.

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