Monthly Archives: July 2024

Do We Have a Deal?

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The famed author of Parkinson’s Law once wrote that there are two kinds of books: those with naked women on the cover, and those without. As a rule, he added, the former sell better. Over the years my blog has carried quite some pictures of women. However, not one of them shows a pair of naked breasts. Much as I love women, specifically including their bodies, it is a policy I intend to follow in the future, too.

Seriously, the blog is now ten years old. During the first four years it was clicked-on more than a quarter of a million times; at that point I lost touch. Not nearly enough to compete with, say, Stormy Daniels and her alleged presidential lover. But perhaps sufficient to merit pausing for a bit of reflection. Before I get started, though, I’d like to thank my stepson Jonathan Lewy, who has been running it on my behalf; Mr. Larry Kummer, editor of the Fabius Maximus website, who more than anyone else has taken an interest in my work and encouraged me to continue posting; my friend Bill Lind whose blog, Traditional Right, is always an inspiration; the painter Bob Barancik; various people who, either after being contacted by me or spontaneously, agreed to write their own essays; and a somewhat larger number who took the trouble to contact me and correspond with me.

Just why I started blogging and kept doing so I am no longer sure. Originally I wanted a forum on which I could write what I wanted at any time and in any form I wanted. Without, what is more, being subject to the whims of editors many of whom have their own agenda and quite a few of whom have always remained more or less unknown to me. That remains true to the present day. Another motive, which was added later, was a growing sense of obligation towards my readers. It is like being married; how could I let them down? Not that I have any illusions that they could not exist without me. However, it is as people say. The one thing worse than a Dutch Calvinist is a Jewish Dutch Calvinist.

Normally I spend about two hours on each post. Often these are times when, for one reason or another, I do not feel like doing more “serious” work. I draw my ideas from various sources. Including, above all, the daily news; any book or books I happened to be reading or working on; and friends’ suggestions. Topics I found particularly interesting included Israeli affairs—I am, after all, a citizen and a resident of that country and have long shared both its triumphs and its failures. Also military affairs in general; women’s affairs (both in- and out of the military); the shape the future might take; political correctness, which is my personal bête noire; why American kids so often take up guns and kill everyone in sight; and others.

Some of these topics have proved much more popular than others. I have, however, never succeeded in guessing in advance which ones would draw many readers and which ones would turn into flops. Truth to say, I have not even seriously tried. Perhaps it is better so; writing to please should only be allowed to go so far and no farther. Some posts, especially those that touch upon the position of women in society as well as the relationship between them and men, have drawn considerable critical fire. Good! May they continue to do so in the future, too.

One part of the work I particularly like is searching Google.com for images. Given enough patience, you will almost certainly find what you are looking for. I know there are a lot of criticisms of Google and I suppose some of them are justified. Any organization as large and successful as they are is bound to make enemies. As, in the past, Western Union, Standard Oil, General Motors, ATT, and Microsoft all did. To me, however, the company has provided a certain kind of freedom people before 2000 or so could not even imagine. Thank you, Google, for your help. It is appreciated.

Finally, I am not getting any younger or healthier. Driving up and down the hills around Jerusalem, which as a young man with twenty kilograms less around the waist I used to run over as if my life depended on it, I often wonder how long before some illness strikes and brings me to a halt. Que sera, sera. This, however I promise my readers:

Never, ever, will I use the kind of swearwords and other forms of expression that, after they have been uttered, require mouthwash.

Never, ever, will I knowingly allow my judgments to be affected by inducements—and there have been a few attempts to offer them—or threats. The kind of threats, incidentally, that are even now being issued by some elements in Israeli academia against any faculty member who dares address any kind of political issue in class.

Never, ever, will I allow anyone or anything to interfere with my right to think, say and write as I saw fit.

Always, always, will I try to keep an open ear to my readers’ suggestions and criticism.

In return, I ask my readers to go on telling me what they think. Preferably by email at mvc.dvc@gmail.com

Do we have a deal?

Ninnies

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Every time I follow the media, I am astonished at the number of women who claim to have been misled and cheated and bamboozled and exploited by those devilishly clever creatures, men. Now it is a question of a man using a fake name and fake photographs to develop any number of more or less illicit relationships with any number of women. Sequentially or simultaneously, it does not matter. Now a man claims to own a modelling agency or work as a fashion photographer in order to achieve the same objective. Now he pretends to be a war hero, which gains him prestige in women’s eyes. Now a psychotherapist or physician, which provides him with opportunities to be alone with them, talk to them the way they like to be talked to, feel them up, and perhaps have sex with them. And now he makes false promises of all kinds of remunerative jobs in foreign countries, only to enslave his victims when they arrive.

Years ago there was published a volume called, Women Who Love too Much. As experiments on Tinder have shown, quite some women keep up the relationship even after the man in question has been exposed as, or confessed to be, a jailbird, or pedophile, or pimp, or whatever. So foolish are many women that, having slept with a man, it sometimes takes them ten or twenty or thirty years as well as psychological counseling to understand that, in “reality,” they were raped or abused or whatever. Just as I was writing this piece, opening Israel’s main newspaper, I learnt of a man who had allegedly “abused women’s mental plight in order to get close to them and obtain millions [of shekels] from them.”

Judging by the media, whereas women never stop raising complaints about men for the opposite to happen is relatively rare. Is that because men are smarter than women and less likely to be tricked? Frankly, I doubt it. Sex hormones are among the most powerful persuaders around. In people of both sexes they often take priority over brains, especially if the people in question also suffer from loneliness or are in any kind of trouble. Ask Sisera, ask Holophernes, both of whom lost their lives at the hands of treacherous women. Not to mention the scene in Basic Instinct (1992) where a woman uses an icepick to kill a man during the sexual act itself. I am more inclined to think that men are far less likely to complain about incidents of this kind. And with good reason, for in case they do complain they are much more likely either to be turned into laughing stock or having the tables turned on them and be accused of harassment or worse.

A woman who feels she has been tricked or exploited by a man can normally open the faucets and let the tears flow. If necessary she can even expose herself, as many have done throughout history and many will doubtless continue to do. Doing so, she can count on obtaining help both from men—what man does not dream of playing the role of the rescuer who later receives his appropriate reward?—and from her feminist sisters. Not so men. As one seventeenth-century English judge, Thomas Egerton, put it: “He sat not there to relieve Fools or Buzzards, who could not keep their Money from their wives.”

By their own accounts, women are easily influenced. They are also hopelessly weak, hopelessly foolish, and hopelessly unable to resist the predations of those wicked creatures, men, who keep outsmarting them. Recognizing this situation, lawyers have devised a strategy, known as the Svengali defense (after the lead male character in Maurier’s 1895 novel, Trilby, intended to get accused females off the hook by shifting the blame to the men around them.) How such miserable creatures can demand “equality” is beyond me.

 

To prevent more problems from emerging, here are a number of proposals that can be put into effect immediately.

 

  1. Women should be confined to the home. In case they go out, then only with male permission and under male escort.

 

  1. All of women’s contacts with strange men should be either supervised or suspended.

 

  1. Women should be banished from the social media as well as all other forms of electronic communications. Their mail should be censored.

 

  1. To prevent them from being preyed on by men, women should be prohibited from having bank accounts.

 

Do you think it can’t be done? It can. Just look at history. And at Afghanistan, of course.

How Can I Help Palestine?

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“How Can I help Palestine” is the title of a short essay I stumbled across on Quora, one of those websites on which you can ask (almost) anything and get answers from (almost) anyone. I thought it was amusing, so I am copying it here.

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How can I help Palestine? I have been boycotting Israeli products. What more can I do?

Throw away its computer. Many of its components were invented or perfected in Israel.

Don’t use texting or instant messaging. Invented or perfected in Israel.

Don’t buy generic drugs. The world’s largest supplier is Teva, an Israeli company. Be sure to pay full price.

Be careful what apps you use on your cell phone. Many of the popular ones were developed in Israel.

Basically, think about how your parents lived in the 1950s and 1960s and use that as the basis of your spending decisions. If it wasn’t in your mother’s kitchen back in the day, chances are Israel has a hand in its current incarnation.

On the other hand buy as much olive oil, dates and figs as you can. They are the mainstays of the Palestinian economy.

Please, God

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Israel, I always say, is like a Chi Wawa. A very small dog that, thanks to its mighty bark, always draws more than its share of attention. The reason why it barks so loudly is because it is surrounded by so many hostile Arabs who keep firing at it. And the other way around, of course. Normally that is all one hears. But there is another side to the matter, and that is what it pleases me to write about today.

I live in Mevasseret Zion, about four or five miles west of Jerusalem. Another mile or so to the west is an Arab village, Abu Ghosh. Some identify it with the Biblical Kiryat Yearim, the place where David took the Ark of the Covenant after it has been recovered from the Philistines. It is also where Mary was resurrected, an event commemorated by a large Benedictine Monastery where concerts are held. During the last decades of Ottoman rule it was a den of highwaymen who preyed on travelers between Jaffa and Jerusalem. During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence its inhabitants sided with Israel, which is why they did not suffer expulsion but were able to stay on their ancestral land. Today it is an Arab, mostly Moslem, village with a population of about 7,600. Economically it is doing extremely well; the reason being that, come Saturday and almost all Jerusalem restaurants are closed, Jews flood the village in their tens of thousands.

Some years ago I had an Arab student who lived with her family in Abu Ghosh. Since our two places are so close to each other, I offered her a ride and after class. She gladly accepted but said she wanted to sit in the rear seat. Feeling slightly offended, I asked her if she really distrusted me. No, she said, I do not. However, she added, it is our custom. Try it and you’ll see I am right. We did try it, many times, and it turned out that she was right. A worry less for her, a worry less for me.

On the way we used to talk. I asked her how she came to be called Osnat, which is a name Jewish, but not Arab, Israeli families sometimes give their daughters (the original Osnat, mentioned in Genesis, was an Egyptian lady whom Pharaoh gave Joseph in recognition of his services to the crown). It turned out that her father was a heavy earth-moving machinery operator. At one point in his life he had worked for a kibbutz woman who treated him very well. By way of saying thanks, he named his daughter after her.

Osnat herself was in her mid-twenties. All her cousins had married at about seventeen and were already the mothers of several children. That, she decided, was not the life she wanted. Instead she went to study and was reading for an M.A in the humanities. More typical of Jewish women than of Arab ones. Her reward was to work as a teacher in east Jerusalem; being an Israeli citizen, she made ten times as much as her Palestinian colleagues. Later she and I lost touch, so I do not know where she is or whether she is still single. Possibly she did not stay in her village but found an Israeli-Arab husband living abroad—educated Israeli Arab women often do.

Nor is this the only way in which Jewish and Arab-Israeli approaches to life often change places and merge. Some years ago CNN did a series on wedding customs around the world. One of the episodes described an Arab wedding. But which Arabs were they? Israeli ones, of course. To distinguish it from a Jewish Israeli wedding one had to be a real expert.

Or visit an Ikea shop, where you will see Jews and Arabs quietly queueing together or else sharing a table while taking a meal. Or Dabach, a supermarket and general purpose store not far from the town of Carmiel in the north that has been doing sufficiently well to spread into central Israel. Same story.

Or visit Karim, a native of Abu Gosh who owns the grocery shop where my wife regularly does her shopping. Over the years we learnt that he is actually a university graduate with a degree in agriculture. Unable to find work in his field, though, he opened a shop and did well enough to take over the one next door as well. Right opposite his place is an Israeli-Jewish plant-nursery several of whose employees are Arabs. This is where the whole of Mevasseret Zion goes to obtain its grass, shrubbery, potted plants, gardening equipment, and so on. Arab or no Arab, I love going there. So much so, in fact, that I sometimes do so with no intention to buy anything, simply for a breath of fresh air.

The recent construction of a new children’s amusement park will no doubt bring in additional hordes of visiting Jerusalemites. Nor is Abu Ghosh the only place where many of us Israeli Jews go in order to get Arab (or “Oriental”) food. My late mother, who was born and raised in the Netherlands before, aged 30, moving to Israel with her husband and three small children used to refer to Arab music as “Arab caterwauling.” Not so many younger Israelis who like to listen to it, as I myself also do; somehow it fits into the landscape in a way Western classical music never can.

Briefly, the impression of eternally squabbling ethnic groups is often misleading. It gets even better than that. Many Western countries have a problem with Muslim women’s clothes. Seeing them as religious symbols, they try to ban them from schools, the civil services, the streets, and even the beaches. Here in Israel we never had any of these problems. True, few Arab Israeli women wear the niqab or face-cover. Go to any beach, and you can see it for yourself. But a great many wear headcover without drawing attention. In any case some Jewish women have also taken to wearing a niqab.

So far, and in spite of events in Gaza, northern Israel and southern Lebanon, the peace in Abu Gosh has held. Whatever may be going on in people’s minds, Never in the four decades my wife and I have been going there did we hear one bad word said about Arab this or Jewish that. Please God, may it stay that way.