And then, just like that, “hot, sultry salsa dancer” fell off the list of possibilities….
(Make sure to visit Agnes at her online home!)
(Oh, and if you have a job? I’m open!)
November 13, 2009
November 12, 2009
“Those children deserve to have someone ask why they died.”
I am trying to Be Responsible. Last week’s illnesses, the weekend’s wedding, and my own turn down Feeling-Like-Crap Lane earlier this week have all combined to create a circumstance in which I OWE PEOPLE A LOT OF WORK!! Ahem. Which I am trying to complete. So, I haven’t even taken the time that I took last week to say “Aaah! No time! Here’s something cool!”
But.
I saw a post by MJ Rosenberg yesterday (at Talking Points Memo’s TPMCafe), and had to say something.
Though Rosenberg often writes some of the sanest stuff on the web about Israel/Palestine, with this post, he wrote nothing, instead simply putting up two minutes of tape from the House floor (re-posted below).
In the video, Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) tells Congress, in no uncertain terms, that: Yes, Israeli children deserve to not live in fear of Hamas rockets — but Palestinian children have a right to not be killed by the Israeli military. He speaks in front of a poster-sized photograph of Palestinian toddlers laid out on a blanket, looking for all the world to be asleep — if not for the wailing of a man on his knees beside them.
Unlike most of our elected officials, Rep. Baird has actually been to Gaza and Sderot (the Israeli town where more Hamas rockets have fallen). He has seen with his own eyes the facts with which both sides have to live, and he has taken an inspiring lead in calling for changes in American policy. You can read about his trip, watch videos of him interviewing people living in the region, and read his thoughts about the Goldstone Report (and the Congressional response to it) on his website. [Though, note: As of this writing, the link to his op/ed about H.Res. 867, the anti-Goldstone resolution, leads to a statement about health care. You'll find the op/ed here.]
If you live in Washington state, or know someone who does, pleaseplease, write to Rep. Baird to thank him for taking such a principled stand. If you don’t, but want to thank him anyway, you unfortunately can’t send an email from the website, and I wouldn’t recommend sending anything to his DC office (security measures mean that snailmail into Congress moves at an almost literal snail pace, taking upwards of two to three weeks to arrive…!), but, you could fax the DC office [(202) 225-3478] or send a note to his Vancouver office:
Rep. Brian Baird O.O. Howard House
750 Anderson Street, Suite B
Vancouver, WA 98661
As always, if you’re an American Jew, mention it. Something along the lines of:
Dear Rep. Baird,
I am not one of your constituents, but I am an American Jew who believes very firmly in the need for a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I just wanted to thank you for the comments you recently made on the House floor regarding the Goldstone Report and the situation in Gaza. I was horrified to learn that Congress passed House Resolution 867 — turning our eyes away from ugly truths will not make them any less true, and it’s time that the Jewish people and the American political class understand the truth of Gaza.
Thank you again and all the best,
NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE
All righty then, here’s his statement. And God bless him for it:
**********************
Earlier:
November 10, 2009
Circulation.
I am cold.
I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold.
I am wearing: Socks. Shoes. Thick wool ankle-warmers that I crafted last year by cutting off the foot portion of a pair of thick wool socks. Jeans. Long-sleeved t-shirt (“Hope Won”). Hoody. Another hoody. Micro-waved hot compress, tucked into the back of my jeans (my lower back is often the coldest part on my body). And I’m considering a scarf. Because I’m still cold.
Only rarely is all of me is cold, all at once. Usually it’s just bits and pieces — by the end of the day, these bits are likely to include my feet, hands, and nose, but currently, it’s the back of my neck, my thighs, and my ankles (yes, really. Even with three layers, one of them wool). It’s a seasonal thing.
I love fall, actually. I think it might be my favorite time of year. There is something so cozy about it, this sense that you’re supposed to turn inwards and quietly care for your own, gather your food into the cellar, smoke a side of beef or something. When I lived in Israel, I really missed watching the leaves turn, and now that I have a maple out my front door, I often just stand and look at it, as it reaches, passes through, and sheds its yellow glory. That’s all over for the year now, but I don’t begrudge the tree the brevity of its color. It’s in the nature of things.
As is, apparently, the fact that I get cold in October, and warm up in April. I wish I had someone to come in every morning to make me my oatmeal, and then make me soup, whenever I need it. Broth steaming, filling the kitchen and the stairwell and my wee little office with an air of onion and celery and barley. I would shake salt across a golden surface, dip in my spoon, and feel warmth spread from tongue to toes. Pull down a zipper, unwind the scarf, and take another sip.
November 6, 2009
Not who you love, but how.
Aaaahhhh!
The kids are quite a bit better (thanks for asking!) but the piles of work remain daunting — plus, remember that whole “my sister and I are off to shop for a wedding gown” thingie? The wedding’s tomorrow! And may I add a hearty: Whoo hoooooo! Love is a lovely thing, isn’t it?
So, um, yeah, not a lot of time for blogging today, either.
But it did strike me that on the eve of a state-sanctioned and socially acceptable exchange of vows, at the end of a week in which certain Americans were told, once again, that: “You know what? You don’t get those rights!,” the following piece might be appropriate. It ran in the Chicago Tribune two years ago in the wake of the Larry Craig case (can you believe it’s been two years already? But I digress!), but the truth is that it is just as applicable today as it was then.
In the words of Representative Patrick Murphy (D-PA), a leader in the fight against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: “If you’re an American, you should believe in equality.”
So, in celebration of my lovely sister and her delightful fiance, and in honor in love in its many, many forms, I offer the following. May we soon see a day on which all Americans are free to marry whomever they may choose.
********************
A LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME
When love is branded as repulsive, gays find it hard to leave the shadows
By Emily L. Hauser
October 07, 2007
Do I want people having sex while I’m using a public bathroom? No.
As a woman, I’m less likely to suffer that particular creepiness than, say, my husband, but I don’t want it happening to him either – he does occasionally take the kids in there after all. There oughta be a law, and I’m glad there is.
But I can guess what led to the practice of looking for sex in public (yet hidden) places – and I know that some men (whether lawmakers like Sen. Larry Craig or the guy from the hardware store) feel they don’t have other options.
Although some of us have become used to (if not always comfortable with)two men holding hands, and although we laugh at campy stereotypes, and we honored “Brokeback Mountain,” the simple truth is that many American homosexuals continue to feel trapped and hounded by a society that defines them (not what they do, not their lifestyle, not their “agenda,” but them) as disgusting.
Anti-gay activists go on about “the children” or “Scriptures” to dignify their positions, but there is a revulsion in their protest, one that is not repudiated often enough. And every young man or woman at the edge of sexual discovery knows it, and to some extent, absorbs it. Whether they have the tools with which to reject it is another question.
Imagine growing up knowing that the gut-turning, joy-giving longing you feel for another person automatically marginalizes you. Imagine that look on your pastor’s face, your mom’s, your friends’ – that look that is reserved for bad smells and perverts. Only it’s you they’re looking at.
The fight against gay marriage is often compared to the old one against interracial unions, but again, we mistake its virulence. After all, the love a black man may feel for a white woman isn’t an integral part of his character; it’s coincidence. This is the wonderful woman he happened to find.
Gay men and lesbians, on the other hand, are told every day that every person they will ever love is a mark of their lesser humanity. That, indeed, the love they feel – the love – is repulsive.
Is it any wonder that some gay people, particularly those raised in communities and families who teach this kind of hatred as holy writ, do everything they can to hide their longings? Is it surprising that some of them throw their weight behind laws and regulations that would further demonize those longings?
Every time we learn of the “lewd conduct” of yet another conservative leader better known for years of anti-gay fury, we must recognize the protests they have led and laws they have sponsored for what they really are: Elaborate closets, built of self-loathing.
I don’t doubt that there are true perverts in the world – some of them even gay! – and that many people will continue to be titillated by naughty sex in nasty places. We will always need to legislate against creepiness.
But if we really want to stop dignified older gentlemen from approaching potential sex partners in hidden places, we need to start teaching impressionable young kids that they are OK no matter who they love.
It’s not whom you love, it’s how you love. And God knows that, even if we don’t yet.
———-
Emily L. Hauser is a freelance writer living in Oak Park.
© Chicago Tribune, 2007
November 5, 2009
Fragile.
Okee dokee then! Today, both kids were home sick. So, no serious blogging, and indeed, no time even to mine the depths of YouTube or Boing Boing…!
The good news, though: It’s not (in the words of my buddy dissolver) the Hamthrax. They have colds and ear infections and all will soon be well (in an aside: You know that you’re surrounded by flu panic when a cold/ear infection diagnosis makes you happy).
In the course of worrying about them last night, though, when they we were both pretty darn miserable and asking (asking!) to go to bed, I was reminded of the following piece that I wrote back in 2007. It ran in the Dallas Morning News, and I remember crying as I wrote it. Today it’s a cold, but someday, it’ll be something much bigger — and I won’t be able to do a damn thing.
***********************
Our children, so fragile
EMILY L. HAUSER
02:49 PM CDT on Sunday, May 13, 2007
When pregnant with my first child, I had the opportunity to ask my graduate school adviser if we might discuss “my future.” With a glance at my belly, he looked me in the eye and said: “Thirty years of heartache.”
To which story my aunt later responded: “Only 30 years?”
If I’ve learned nothing else since the birth of that baby nearly eight years ago, it’s that your heart always aches. Happy or sad, there are many days when the heart feels it must surely implode from the weight of emotion, not least of course, the intense and impossible need to Keep the Babies Safe.
Right now my husband and I find our little family to be bathed in the glow of blessed days. The children – a beautiful boy and girl – are healthy, smart and funny, and in addition to delighting their parents daily, actually love and enjoy each other, too. We are the family Norman Rockwell was thinking of all those years.
It is impossible, though, not to think that this golden time will inevitably end. Human experience indicates that a day will dawn on which our idyll is at the very least tarnished. The fear, of course, is that it will be shattered.
Like everyone, I know my fair share of parents whose children have been visited by tragedy. I think of my friend whose baby died at birth and the one who whose 10-year-old was shot in the head. I know a kind and patient man who lost his teenager down the hole to over-the-counter drug abuse and a warm and giving woman whose previously sunny son is now, at 22, in the grip of paralyzing depression. My grandmother buried my father when he was all of 35.
They are so fragile, these babies. So many things can go wrong, and at any moment.
Paradoxically, it is my rational self that blazes a trail for me down the road to fear. The cycle of life, human nature, acts of God – all act as constant reminders that nothing is forever, that everything, eventually, breaks, rots, dies. My children’s bones will one day lie in the earth, and there is no way for me to know that their end will not come far earlier than it should or that their days will not be filled with sorrow.
My absolute inability to keep them from harm takes my breath away. Limbs will break, hearts will break. Please God, not spirits. The maxim that joy is not complete without grief to shape it interests me not in the least – let their joy be shapeless, I think, but let it be joy.
And so it is tempting to see this time of blessing as a trick of the light, an ill-defined prelude to disaster. My siblings and I were struck by catastrophe before we could read or write, when cancer snatched our father from us as surely as it did from his mother; as I grew up, all happiness was, in fact, shaped by that grief. It is hard for me to stop.
But something about this boy and this girl who I hold so lightly, with so few tools or guards, has opened a place I couldn’t dream existed. Just as I have learned that the bittersweet ache never ends, so too have my children taught me that the heart can be quiet, and that the joy in a 3-year-old’s song and a 7-year-old’s hand is unending. That these things can never be lost, even if they are taken.
I curl around my daughter in her tiny bed and hold her warmth to my belly. I cover my son with the blanket he’s tossed aside, and watch his limbs stretch endlessly beneath it, an impossible length of boy. I pray that this time will never end. I pray for the strength to hold them when it does.
Emily L. Hauser is a freelance writer living outside of Chicato. Her e-mail address is elhauser@hotmail.com.
November 4, 2009
Good stuff: Hey, hey, we’re the germ-ridden.
Well, the girl is home sick from school, so work has been kind of catch-as-catch-can chez In My Head today!
So, serious blogging – out.
However, as she watched Jonas this morning (before switching over to PBS! Don’t lynch me!), I was struck by how much Jonas is essentially a 21st century Disney version of The Monkees (down to and including the fire poll in the middle of their mildly surrealistic living room — the producers of Jonas MUST know what they’re doing here). And, IMHO, both the Jonas Brothers (the band) and The Monkees (the band, and the TV show) are vastly underrated. Particularly The Monkees, the TV show. (And Jonas, the show isn’t all that bad, as these things go). (No, I said DON’T lynch me!)
So a) I’ve determined that I must get my hands on a Monkees DVD to show my kids what real absurdist humor is all about, and b) in the meantime, in lieu of serious blogging, I thought I’d bring you a little bit of Monkees mania!
First, the delightful “Last Train to Clarksville,” as it appeared on the show, then a bit with Frank Zappa (for real!) in one of those little pre-show things that they did, and finally, a two-minute slice from a documentary (“Peter Tork and Davy Jones come to blows”!!) that I have determined that I must someday watch in its entirety.
And if, after all that, you still doubt my assessment of the Monkees, well, then: I said good day sir!
(And I have to wonder: Forty years from now, presuming she gets over this cold, will my daughter be doing the 2049 equivalent of blogging about Jonas…? Hmmm…).
November 3, 2009
One/Not One.
Update: CitizenE just wrote the following, in the comments, and he is, of course, right: “It’s sentimental, for the moment, for our weariness, and given, it strikes me, with a generosity of spirit. We listen; there is a moment of grace in which our hands can touch the dream of the beating human heart….”
I’m torn.
A few days ago, commenter CitizenE (holla!) posted the Playing for Change version of “One Love” in a comment on my About Commenting page, and it’s lovely, just – lovely. The message of Bob Marley’s original, the production of this version, and the idea at the root of Playing for Change: “a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.” Just lovely.
But at the same time, it’s also all wrong.
“Let’s get together and feel all right” only works until the first person has his feelings hurt, or her home destroyed. If we get too caught up in the idea that we’re all alike, if we fail to give due respect to the ways in which we are, in fact, very different, we can easily get sucked into disillusionment and anger, and ultimately, fail to achieve much of anything — or, on the contrary, make things worse. I’ve seen this play out in Israeli-Palestinian efforts at coexistence, and I think I’m seeing it play out all around the world every day.
We are different. I am no longer so willing to give myself over to stirring tunes and the emotional uplift they provide.
Of course, I am feeling weary and worn down, unable to see a lot of hope no matter where I look. So I may be overthinking this. And it really is lovely. So I present it here, and encourage you to check out both the Playing for Change website, and the other songs (I particularly like this one, “War/No More Trouble.” And not just because of the presence of a certain Irish singer).
I’m hedging my bets — because I’d rather feel hope than not.
common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people
November 2, 2009
Good stuff: Geekify the baby.
Too much work! Not enough time to think! So I bring you this, for it is delightful:
As is so often the case, I found this bit of delight over to the Boing Boing, where Cory Doctrow sez: “I love that they have a redshirt version (for expendable babies!).” The onesie — available in command gold, science yellow blue [sheesh!], and operations red — can be purchased through ThinkGeek, which cautions that, if you buy the red, you “might want to keep a short leash on this one.” Indeed!
(ThinkGeek, by the way, is also the home of the “Self Rescuing Princess” tee, the “Hello My Name is Inigo Montoya” tee, and the “meh.” tee. Just in time for the holidays!).
October 30, 2009
Oh, for the love of Moses!
It has been brought to my attention that the Goldstone Report has near god-like (Satan-like?) power. Behold: It made a man shoot people in a synagogue, just yesterday!
The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday expressed “deep concern” over a shooting at a Los Angeles synagogue earlier in the day in which two people were wounded…. Likud [Member of Knesset] Danny Danon, meanwhile, said the attack was the result of a damning United Nations report on Israel’s winter offensive against Hamas in Gaza, compiled by South African jurist Richard Goldstone. “The criminal attack in Los Angeles is a clear result of the Goldstone report,”he said. “Countries across the world need to reject the report, which brings with it hatred and anti-Semitism, and harms the peace process.” – HaAretz
Because, you know, no one ever picked up a gun and decided to give violent expression to an unhinged mind, before Goldstone. Certainly no one ever targeted Jews!
About seven years ago, I had the privilege of participating in a University of Chicago panel discussion with the late, great Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf (z”l); Peter Novick, author of the excellent The Holocaust in American Life; and Ali Abunimah, of The Electronic Intifada. Before us was, essentially, one question: Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic, by definition?
My short answer: Don’t be daft.
My longer answer, as adapted from the talk I gave at the panel, appeared a week or so later in the Chicago Tribune, and you’ll find it, below. Because, bottom line, my thoughts on the matter haven’t changed in seven years — and clearly, neither have Israel’s, given its response to Goldstone. (In my head, just now, I ended that sentence with the words “poor man” — and I mean: Really! That poor man! Sigh.)
BUT, before I go on to the Tribune op/ed, I want also to mention that the US House of Representatives has apparently lost its damn mind — or, 114 of the Representatives have, at any rate — and is passing around House Resolution 867, which calls on President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to
oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” [the Goldstone Report]in multilateral fora.
So, a) to follow up on yesterday, Hamas now looks more reasonable than these 114 US Representatives. And b) if your Congressmember appears on this list, please let them know how much you disagree with the resolution! If his or her name does not appear, please let them know how much you hope it never will! And please spread the word to other people who might be interested in having their voices heard. For a very good take on why the resolution is so wrong-headed, please read this statement by Americans for Peace Now.
And now, to our main attraction:
On anti-semitism and criticism of Israel
By Emily L. Hauser. Emily L. Hauser lives in Oak Park
December 9, 2002
Does anti-Semitism exist? Of course. There have always been people who object to the peculiar religion of the Jews. People who believe that we are by nature power-hungry, evil.
Sadly, in the face of this, the fear of anti-Semitism has become one of the Jewish people’s few unifiers. We long ago stopped agreeing on how to worship God, educate our children, or treat women. About the only positions over which most Jews are near agreement are: 1) the Holocaust proved that Jews are never entirely safe, and 2) Israel is Good. For those who might waver in the latter, the former is referenced as corroborating evidence. Ethnic anxiety (to paraphrase Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic) has become virtually our only proof of authenticity.
Yet, does this mean, can it possibly mean, that any criticism of any Jew is, by definition, anti-Semitic? The term assumes baseless hatred, and allows us to summarily reject anything it touches. But if I do wrong, and someone points it out, isn’t the wrong still mine, even (and this is very important) if that someone hates me?
We take the easy way out when we conflate criticism of Israel’s government with anti-Semitism. If all criticism of Israel comes from a place of baseless hatred (or, in the case of Jews who express it themselves, typical self-loathing) then we needn’t consider it, hold it to the light and examine its contents. The accusation of anti-Semitism thus consistently serves to paralyze thought within the Jewish community, as McCarthyism once did within American society.
Much as I can’t believe that as a loyal American, I’m not allowed to criticize the American government, I also can’t believe that as a loyal Israeli, I mustn’t criticize, or brook criticism of, the Israeli government. Being in a state of war doesn’t make governments incapable of error, nor does war itself justify every action a government takes. When we elevate Israeli politicians and generals to the kind of infallibility that assumes that criticism can only be made with evil intent, we remove them from history, reality, the very normalcy to which Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion is said to have aspired.
To say that Israel is held to a higher standard than most is equally ahistorical. Humanity has never been anything but inconsistent in judging friends and foes — Israel has been held to standards higher than some, and lower than others. The question should not be: Are we being treated fairly? Are we allowed to be as bad as the next guy? But: How do we do good? How do we behave with fairness?
Having said that, I will agree that some of Israel’s critics are flat-out, flaming anti-Semites. But the bigger truth is that some of the people who criticize us from a place of hatred aren’t anti-Semitic — they just plain hate us.
It’s very popular, in Israel and the diaspora, to discuss anti-Semitism in Palestinian schools. The enduring appeal of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is frequently cited. Following the suicide bombing at Hebrew University, many Jews pointed out that most of the Jews killed there weren’t Israeli — the target was Jews, qua Jews, they said.
And yet. Isn’t there a difference between, say, an American blaming “the Jews” for the world’s ills, and a Palestinian — told over and over that Israel is a Jewish state, for all Jews, everywhere, eternally — who blames “the Jews” for the ills his countrymen suffer? Is it baseless hatred — or hatred based in 35 years of my boot on his neck? Why do we want to believe that the Palestinians wouldn’t notice how badly we’ve treated them if no one were to point it out? Do we honestly believe they hate us so much for our peculiar religion that they would rather die, than see us live?
It’s true that this hatred, the kind found in every conflict ever launched between peoples, often takes on classically anti-Semitic expression among Arabs generally. It’s further true that if any Arabs hope to achieve reconciliation with Israel, they will have to learn to respect our sensitivities, recognize them as legitimate (2,000 years of persecution don’t just go away) and find a new vocabulary. To draw any comparison, for instance, between Israel and Nazi Germany is ghastly and repellent — and it frees us to reject anything else the speaker may say.
In all honesty, though, personally, I don’t care if the critics of Israeli policies are anti-Semitic. I don’t care if the Europeans, Americans, or Palestinians like me — at this point, I’d be surprised if the Palestinians did. As an Israeli, what must matter to me is the morality of my country’s actions, regardless of personal feelings of pique. We need to examine our history fearlessly, and find a way to right the many wrongs we have committed. Rather than hide behind our fears, I want to have the strength to do the right thing.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
**********************
Earlier:
October 29, 2009
You know you’re in trouble when.
Here’s how to know you’re in trouble: When Hamas sounds more reasonable than you do.
I am no fan of Hamas. I have a number of reasons for my lack of affection, not least the fact that on more than one occasion, one of their bombers could very easily have killed me. Then there’s the fact that the organization was founded out of a desire to rid the world of my home (let’s be frank), a goal premised in an ideology based in the sort of religious fanaticism that I find deeply disturbing no matter who’s expressing it (or what the religion).
But when faced with the fact that the United Nation’s Fact Finding Mission on the Conflict in Gaza (aka: the Goldstone Report) called on Hamas to investigate their behavior in last winter’s war, Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s political leader, said the other day that “if the report or any other side has any reservations on Hamas’ actions, we are ready to explain them and we will form an honest and neutral investigative committee in Gaza to give Goldstone and its committee and the international community the facts.”
Huh. Compare this to the response of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu: “The Goldstone report is a kangaroo court against Israel, whose consequences harm the struggle of democratic countries against terror.”
Setting aside my own opinion on the war and Israel’s behavior in it — indeed, setting aside my own opinions of the occupation — there is a very basic question to be asked. Is it possible that, in the course of a massive incursion into someone else’s territory, your army and its soldiers behaved as something less than angels? Even setting aside the question of intent — isn’t it just possible that Israel did something wrong?
I would wager that Meshal is a smart guy, and can see exactly the impression Israel is making on the world stage right now. Having been told by Justice Richard Goldstone, a highly respected member of the international legal community (and a lifelong Zionist, to boot), that the Israel Defense Forces did some pretty unethical stuff in the course of the war, Israel has doubled-down, dug in its heels, and pouted. Having conceded that some sort of inquiry might be necessary — to make the world shut up already — Netanyahu has promised the military that no officers or soldiers will be called on to testify.
The entire country looks more like a thwarted child than a responsible member of the international community. Meshal has very little to lose by saying “Hey, look, we’ll look into it” — and he probably knows that he has a whole lot to gain.
But here’s the deal: Like them or not, Hamas is Israel’s enemy — by which I mean, they are the people with whom we have to deal if we want this 60+ year war to end. We don’t get to pick our enemies, and I would venture that for the most part, nobody much likes their enemies. I’m pretty clear on the fact that they don’t like us, for instance.
But now, with one interview, the feared head of a fairly repulsive organization has come out looking calm, reasonable, and responsible, while Bibi and his bunch look, at best, like Eddie Murphy in Raw.
My fear — my deeply-based-in-reality fear — is that the United States, the world’s sole remaining super power and the only force on earth that could possibly sway Israel toward responsible, moral behavior, will let them get away with it.
Even if the report eventually gets to the Security Council, there is little chance it will take any action, primarily because of objections by the United States, Israel’s closest ally which has veto power and has said the report is biased and should not be taken up by the UN’s most powerful body. – HaAretz
I’m just sayin’ — if Hamas looks more reasonable than you? You’re in trouble.
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Earlier:
