Check out my debate with hard-core conservative blogger John Hawkins on Silda Spitzer and feminism.

Want to know what living in Sderot is like these days? Check this out. I was happy to discover Laura Bialis guest-posting on Judy Balint's Jerusalem Diaries and have drafted her to report for Pajamas Media from Sderot. I have tremendous respect for her, as I do for anyone else sticking it out in Sderot.

So what do I think about Gaza? Seems that's what everyone abroad is asking me.

I'm as peace-loving as they come. Really, I am. Bleeding heart, even. But even types like me are having a hard time working up some old-fashioned Jewish guilt about the Palestinian suffering in Gaza.

If it were possible to send out an engraved invitation to be attacked, bombed, have your neighborhoods destroyed, your leaders hunted down and your people killed and terrorized – Gaza’s Hamas leadership would be first in line at the printers.

How else to explain the events that led up to this weekend’s attacks on Gaza, the ones that are predictably lead to headlines decrying the destruction that the Israel Defense Forces are wreaking on the population of Gaza?

Israelis were not in the mood for war. After the experience two summers ago, when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded quickly and forcefully to the kidnapping of soldiers, there were recriminations for months and years that he was too hot-headed, that it wasn’t thought out.

And so restraint has been the name of the game when it came to Gaza. Restraint in the face of angry residents of the city of Sderot who have had to face life under the threat of Kassam attacks that gradually escalated from occasional, to consistent, to constant. And yet Israel waited. Olmert and other leaders agreed that Israel cannot rush headlong into a conflict with Hamas, they didn’t want to destroy whatever progress was possible with Abbas, they didn’t need the world condemnation, and most importantly, they didn’t want to walk into a trap. If Israel was going into Gaza, it would happen on Israel’s timeline.

But Hamas grew impatient. If rocket attacks on Sderot weren’t working, they upped the ante and began attacking Ashkelon, with unsubtle hints that their next move was Ashdod.

They clearly knew this was a red line, that if crossed, would lead to Israeli retaliation, as it would be simply politically intolerable for any Israeli leader to leave such attacks unanswered.

And so they are getting what they have asked for – Israeli attacks, death and destruction, and the accompanying condemnations from the United Nations Security Council. Is it worth it?

Is the world truly so stupid as to understand that the Hamas tactic is to turn their population into human shields by attacking Israeli civilians with rockets that are launched in civilian centers full of women and children?

I love this BBC report describing the "angry and unbowed" Gazans:

One of the recent victims was a six-month-old baby boy killed when a roof collapsed on top of him.

A family relative, Ahmed Burai, 27, said the baby's mother found out her son was dead when she heard it announced on the radio.

He accused Israel of acting "hysterically" over the rocket attacks from Gaza and said that its military operation could prove counterproductive.

How does one react to having Kassam rockets hurled at you "non-hysterically?" What is with all this talk of "disproportionate" response - shades of the Lebanon War. I would like someone to reveal the secret formula of the precisely correct level of retaliation for senseless violence that has been launched against residents of southern Israel. Maybe if we can figure out the Emily Post proper etiquette for response, the UN will miraculously refrain from condemning Israel for defending herself. Ya think?

Later in the BBC piece:

Ahmed Abdullah, 61, a retired headmaster, says he spent the last two days terrified in his home as fighting raged round him.

He had no candles or batteries - the economic boycott has led to widespread shortages - and following an electrical power cut sat in the dark unable to obtain information from his radio about the fighting.

Mr Abdullah says the only way to stop the violence is to allow to Hamas govern.

"We voted democratically and we're punished for our choice," he said.

"They need to be given a chance, they need to breathe. If you give Hamas a political opportunity then it will only moderate the movement."

Hello, Mr. Abdullah - Hamas has gotten a political opportunity - and guess what they've done with it? They've squandered it. Big-time. They've put war with Israel on the top of their priority list - far higher than the well-being of their citizens. Do you not see that? Or are you just afraid to say it?

Poor Prime Minister Haniyeh has no office to go to anymore. I'm trying hard to work up some sympathy for him...Jewish guilt ain't what it used to be.

Check it out:

Barack Obama laid it on the line to an Israeli newspaper Wednesday: “I am not a Muslim and I never have been. I never studied at a Madrassa and I have never sworn on the Koran. I am committed to Christianity.” Allison Kaplan Sommer looks at Obama’s recent crusade to allay the concerns of American Jews worried about Israel’s position in an Obama administration.

Read the rest of the Obamaliciousness here...

Good one, Jewcy

This skit on the comedy show "A Wonderful Country" was so clever, it had to be translated and shared with the world....

Here's my latest at Pajamas Media.

The Annapolis peace conference has managed to elicit a mood not normally associated with the Israeli public: indifference.

Unlike previous “peace extravaganzas” like Camp David, the Madrid Peace Conference, the various Oslo signings, average Israeli citizens haven’t been glued to their television sets and radios following their leaders’ movement and listening to the speeches and wondering how the dramatic events overseas will affect their lives. There’s no buzz.

Of all Israelis watching television during the afternoon’s live broadcasts of Annapolis, the total ratings of all of the channels which aired the events was the same as the audiences for the daily soaps. The viewership of the evening news reporting weren’t any higher than on an average night. Appropriate for what most of the audience considers a re-run - they’ve heard the speeches and promises of peace before.

The cynicism is so established that you can’t even get a good argument going about Annapolis on the street. Bring up the subject and you are in for a lot of shrugging and eye-rolling - and a rapid change of subject.

To make sure this wasn’t just happening in my own social circles, while going about my morning errands today, I decided to sound out Sagi, the owner of the corner store while I picked up my groceries. After the requisite shrug, eye-roll, and sigh, he confessed uncomfortably, “It’s not nice to say that you don’t care about what happens to the country. But we’re just tired. We’re tired of it all.”

Read the rest...

And a profile of the singer...

My kids walked to school two days ago, leaving the house and melting in a crowd of children heading down the street, all wearing white shirts and solemn expressions on their faces.

As I type these words, they are standing at attention at their school ceremonies, marking a national trauma that happened before they were born and remembering a leader they never knew – Yitzhak Rabin. The official ceremonies take place on the Hebrew anniversary of the event, which took place on Nov. 4, 1995.

Every year around the anniversary the Israeli media seems to come up with an appropriately-timed revelation regarding the assassination. This year it was the release of the tape of Yigal Amir’s interrogation by police immediately after he killed Rabin.

He confessed in a chillingly matter-of-fact and utterly unrepentant manner in a transcript published in the country's largest Hebrew daily, Yediot Aharonot:

Amir: “I arrived today at 8:15 from my home. There were many police and security around. Then Rabin approached. Peres was walking behind him, but I didn’t shoot him because he was a secondary target. When Rabin came down the stairs with his security people I got close to him as he was getting into his car. I shot three bullets. Then the security people jumped on me. I let go of the gun.”

Interrogator: “When you went there, were you aware of where you were going and what your intention was?”

Amir: “To kill Rabin.”

Interrogator: “To kill Rabin?”

Amir: “No, not to kill, to silence him politically.”

Interrogator: “And how did you plan to accomplish this?”

Amir: “With my gun”

Interrogator: “That was in your possession?”

Amir: “That was in my possession.”

Interrogator: “When did you get the idea to shoot the Prime Minister?”

Amir: “Since the first Oslo agreement.”

Interrogator: “My last question is personal: You have killed him. Do you regret or are you sorry for what you have done.”

Amir: “Heaven forbid.”

Interviewed by Yediot about the tape, the interrogator Moti Naftali further described how Amir rejoiced and raised his hands in victory when he first learned that Rabin was dead, lifted the glass of tea he was drinking and asked that they join him in a toast.

“I had to count till three in order not to just punch him in the face, because that’s what I wanted to do,” Naftali confessed.

It is difficult to comprehend why authorities held this tape back for twelve years. If the tape had been made public earlier, it could have thrown some much needed cold water on the numerous far-fetched conspiracy theories that have blossomed since the murder, JFK-style.

In the past, I’ve compared the impact of Rabin’s assassination in Israel to that of the slaying of John F. Kennedy in the U.S.

And it is true that my children are as knowledgeable regarding the details of the shooting in Rabin Square as I, who was born a year after JFK was killed, could describe the grassy knoll and the bloodstains on Jackie Kennedy’s suit at a young age. Every year the ceremonies are held, and details are revisited, with Rabin’s family, friends and associates, reliving that date and speculating whether or not Israel’s political fate might have been different if Rabin had lived – just as Americans wondered whether Vietnam might have played out differently if JFK had remained president.

But there is one big difference - unlike Kennedy’s assassin, Rabin’s killer, Yigal Amir is alive, which keeps alive the focal point of the pain of the assassination.

No matter where one’s political sympathies may lie, there is a basic horror regarding the fact that on this day twelve years ago, Israel’s leader was not murdered by one of the country’s mortal enemies in the outside world, but by one of our own. The annual reminder of this makes the event as fresh and painful as it was twelve years ago.

The media coverage of the details of Amir’s life in prison dutifully reported on the news, is a continual flow of salt in an open wound. This year should be more painful than most, with his wife, Larissa Trimbobler, a member of the strange and extreme cult of supporters and sympathizers who is due to give birth to his child shortly.

Israel is a country that celebrates children – and never has the birth of a child been so dreaded. Already, Yigal Amir’s camp launched a “Free Amir campaign” The group, labeled by Rabin’s granddaughter Noa Ben Artzi-Rotman as “a shrill and perverse choir” and by his grandson Jonathan Ben-Arzi as an “insane asylum” recently launched a pressure campaign to free him, or, short of that allow the assassin a furlough to attend the baby’s circumcision, or to allow the ceremony to take place in the prison.

There is some receptivity for their view that Amir is not a national disgrace, but a man who made a noble sacrifice by disrupting the peace process begun at Oslo. A recent survey found that 20 percent of the religious public feel he should be pardoned.

So pervasive is the antagonism against this group that a nationally prominent singer Ariel Zilber, who signed a statement of support of the “Free Amir” campaign, is facing calls to boycott his music on the radio and in stores.

Many call the focus on Amir, both by those who would demonize him or heroize him “unhealthy obsession.”

One thing is clear - in this contentious atmosphere, it has been close to impossible for the nation to move on. Every year, emotionally, it is pulled back to the same place.

Nahum Barnea, the dean of Israeli political pundits, believes that the focus on Amir and company utterly contradicts the spirit of Rabin himself.

“The bunch of losers who surrounded him are undeserving of the sacred rage that is leveled at them. Not his Trimbobler bride, not his mother, not his brother and not the singer Ariel Zilber. They have nothing but a pathetic need for attention. The anger should be directed at others. At the Shin Bet's security personnel that allowed the murder to take place. We should be angry at bodyguard Yoram Rubin who allowed the assassin to emerge unharmed. We should be angry at Yitzhak Rabin for refusing to surround himself with an extra security belt despite the many warnings, including from myself. We should direct our anger at Justice Meir Shamgar and the commission of inquiry he headed because it missed the opportunity to reach the root cause of the murder and to draw real conclusions from it. We should be angry at Shimon Peres because instead of dealing with those who incited Amir to kill, he opted to turn over a new leaf. The following proposal should be made to those who belong to what is termed "the peace camp:" Don't light candles today and on November 4th. Don't sing sweet, melancholy Israeli songs that are full of self-pity. Be angry, this is what Yitzhak Rabin would have done so well: Be angry.”

Perhaps. But it is impossible not to also be sad.

(Originally published at PJM)

It's Eitan's birthday!!!!

My baby is 11 years old. I don't believe it.

Here he is wearing a jacket and tie for the first time in his life, and not looking too thrilled about it. Growing up sucks sometimes.

Here is what I wrote about the events of 9/11 in a post published on September 11, 2003:

To me, September 11 will always be a happy, joyful day.

Even my memories of September 11, 2001 will be cheerful ones.

“WHY?” you may ask in horror, and then justifiably insist that I give you a damn good reason.

OK, I will. My wonderful beautiful son Eitan was born on September 11, 1996. I can’t even blame the choice of the date on fate: I scheduled it – it was an induced delivery.

So I will not allow terrorists to ruin the birthday of my firstborn child, nor the memory of his fifth birthday. I refuse.

I will celebrate on September 11 every single year, no matter what.

Yes, of course I will mourn and remember the victims of the terror attacks, but not necessarily on that day. It’s going to be hard enough for him having that birthday, and at least his mother should be able to celebrate with him. About to turn seven, he is still happily oblivious of what his birthday means to everyone else. When adults ask him what his birthday is and he tells him, they say nothing, just share a sympathetic, eye-rolling look with me. How I wish, wish, wish that someone had thought of a name for the day like “Pearl Harbor Day” or “V-J Day.” Something, anything other than simply saying “September 11.” But that didn’t happen and it doesn’t look as though it ever will.

I will admit that September 11, 2001 was a completely surreal day for me and one that I will never forget. As luck would have it, that was probably the only day on which I ever actually scheduled one of my children’s birthday parties on their actual birthday.

I live in a suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel. The time difference between Israel and the United States is seven hours. Eitan’s birthday party was scheduled for 4 PM. So when the attacks happened, I was deep in party preparation mode, battening down the hatches for the invasion of 20 small children and their moms.

It was my mother-in-law, who was in the car heading to my house from Jerusalem to the party with the birthday cake, who heard the news on the radio, and called me to turn on the television – just as my first guests were arriving.

Since it was early September, and Eitan hadn’t really gotten to know the kids in his kindergarten class yet, the party was mostly made up of my friends and their children. Nearly all of my friends are American and Canadian born. So as each child walked in the door, I would have to pull the mom aside and break the news.

The whole afternoon felt like I was part of the cast of a play, acting up a storm. We, the moms, acted happy, cheerful smiling, facilitating the party, organizing games, serving cake, lighting candles, snapping pictures and singing Happy Birthday, while inside we were experiencing shock, horror and disbelief. There were the children frolicking, having fun, while their mothers were quietly freaking out.

We couldn’t put on the television downstairs where the children could see and hear, so we kept sneaking upstairs to catch a glimpse of CNN or check the Internet, and try to get hold of our families.

I didn’t worry about anyone until I heard the news that one of the planes that hit the towers had taken off from Boston – that is when I began frantically calling (to no avail) and E-mailing. My brother Adam works in hi-tech in Boston and travels for business several times a week.

As it turned out, I had reason for worry. He came close. One of the planes that hit the towers was the American Airlines Flight 11 headed from Boston to Los Angeles. Adam was scheduled to fly on American from Boston to San Francisco, on a flight that was scheduled to leave a half hour later. In the American Airlines club that morning, he had greeted several of the passengers he knew on Flight 11. They boarded their ill-fated plane and shortly afterwards, he boarded his.

His flight never left the ground. News of the attacks came before their take-off and the passengers on his Flight were returned to Logan Airport, held there without explanation, and finally allowed to go home. It wasn’t until he was in his car that he learned what had happened. How frighteningly easy it could have been for him to be on Flight 11. His plan, if the San Francisco flight had been booked full, was to fly to LA and then continue north to San Francisco.

Thank god it wasn’t.

As for the reaction to the events in Israel, we were stunned and devastated, despite the fact that we were painfully familiar with terrorism. The truth is that we were used to terrorism happening to US. And we were used to the idea of the United States being a nice safe haven where these kind of things don’t happen. Israeli travel to New York for vacation, or they move there temporarily or permanently, in order to be far away from the Middle East, to be in a place where you don’t have to think about terrorism, where there aren’t security guards at every entrance, where every home doesn’t have an emergency stock of bottled water and duct tape. It was deeply frightening for a country which views America as its protector and defender to see America’s vulnerability. It still is.

We were very scared at first that somehow we would get blamed for it, that Americans would say, “If it wasn’t for Israel, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Thank goodness that for the most part, this hasn’t happened.

In fact, we feel closer to American than ever before. Personally, I do have a sense that Americans understand and sympathize with Israelis more after September 11. In one sense, that fact is wonderful and comforting. But at the same time, I hate that my fellow Americans have come to resemble my fellow Israelis.

I used to love traveling home to the U.S. to regain that sense of protectedness, safeness, naiveté that I had in the United States, where I spent the first 28 years of my life – and it just doesn’t exist any more. Especially in New York and Washington.

I haven’t been back to Ground Zero yet. It used to be familiar territory. I never lived or worked there during the two years I was a New Yorker, but it became my home as a tourist. My favorite hotel was the Millenium Hilton, right across from the towers. I used to get rooms that looked directly into the Plaza, and I spent hours browsing the Borders bookstore in the mall complex at the bottom, shopping for clothes for my Children at The Children’s Place there. I can still picture it perfectly in my mind’s eye, and on a deep level, haven’t yet registered that it is no longer there.

Sometimes I wonder which is worse, this large-scale devastating mega-terror that occurred on September 11, or the disheartening, never-ending parade of violence that we in Israel experience day after day, week after week. Frankly, I think I would choose September 11 over this endless nightmare of violence.

One thing that has bothered me a bit has been the refrain of my peer group in the United States. The world changed on September 11, they say, and they want the old world back.

But there was no old world -- only the illusion of one. The truth is that the world didn’t change. The truth is that the world has been a cruel, scary, nasty, unpredictable place for a very long time. Americans merely had the luxury of feeling safe and protected from it.

Americans of my generation, for whom Vietnam is a mere faint childhood memory, Korea is a bunch of MASH episodes, and the two World Wars are the stuff of history books, had the luck to spend the first half of their lives in the uniquely safe, secure golden era in the America of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Yes, we had the Cold War, but that always seemed like more of a far-away, theoretical idea than a close-range, bloody threat, and it had a happy ending. In Gulf War 1, Saddam threatened Kuwait, but not us. In general, bad scary awful things happened Out There, but inside the protected bubble of the United States, it seemed like nothing could really touch us.

It was a wonderful era while it lasted. But it’s over. Clearly, it was not sustainable. But I wish it hadn’t had to end with such a cruel, painful, unbelievable event like the September 11 attacks. Nobody should have to be smacked in the face that hard by reality. But it is reality.

The world we live in is full of threats, and we can't wish them away. We must fight them. And we must never, ever forget.

Well, he's not oblivious anymore. He knows exactly what happened on 9/11. And in his 11-year-old way, he thinks his birthday is kind of cool and likes people reaction when he asks them, "Do you know what my birthday is? I'll give you a hint -- something really, really terrible happened on that day!"

OK, this IS funny. Wish I was had been Edinburgh so I could have seen all Jihad: The Musical at the Fringe festival.

Featuring songs such as 'I wanna be like Osama' and the love ballad 'I Only See Your Eyes', Jihad the Musical is a madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism; one that puts the powers that be in their place, and that invokes the Blitz spirit that we must laugh at those who seek to intimidate us.

JIHAD THE MUSICAL tells the story of a young Afghan peasant, Sayid. Coming from the desert, Sayid dreams of proving himself to his bossy sister Shazzia and to the world, by making it as a flower farmer. Enchanted by a mysterious veiled woman, he leaps at her offer to work for a company that ‘exports poppies’ to the West. Unfortunately, Sayid soon discovers that the woman is a terrorist, and the company a front for a jihadi cell seeking to blow up targets in the West, most particularly one known as the Unidentified, Very Prestigious Landmark.

Farce ensues as Sayid is brainwashed by the all-singing, all-dancing jihadis, vowing to fight for their cause. Meanwhile, a sinister reporter, Foxy Redstate, uncovers the plot, encouraging Sayid to keep her in the loop in the hope that such an exclusive will propel her to media stardom. Sayid finds himself caught between the terrorists on one hand and the media on the other, driven to share in their enthusiasm for the impending terrorist spectacular. Fortunately help is on the way in the form of his no-nonsense sister, who teams up with a surrender-prone Frenchman to come to the rescue. Everything comes to a head on the night of the attack, where, caught between his sister, the bloodthirsty global media, and the jihadis he has come to see as a new family, Sayid has to decide whose side he is really on.

Now, THAT'S a story....

It's already being protested, of course. (Haven't the humorless people circulating the petition against it ever heard of "Springtime for Hitler?")

(via LGF)

My alma mater was officially crowned The Most Annoying Liberal Arts School in America by Gawker!

How cool is that? Now I can blame my annoying-ness on my education!

I must agree with many of the points made in the post and the comments. But hell, I had a great time and met many brilliant people I wouldn't have known otherwise. I can't imagine what I would be like if I hadn't gone there. And it sort of saddens me that there's no way my kids will have the same experience.

It's not just because of money. My kids are going to do army service for 2-3 years after high school. And it's impossible to arrive on campus and act as completely idiotically as Wes students do as freshmen when you are a 21-year old-veteran and not an 18-year-old spoiled brat. My kids will likely go the typical Israeli route -- finish the army, go be idiots for six months in the Far East or South America, and then start university much more serious and goal-oriented manner than those frolicking stoned and naked on the lawn at Wesleyan. (As a parent, frankly, I'd rather have them experimenting with drugs on a Connecticut campus than on some beach in Thailand. Well, obviously, as a parent, I'd rather have them not experiment at all. But, you know...)

The bottom line for me was that Wesleyan was great for the first two years - then after I went abroad junior year and returned, it all looked a little ridiculous to me, and I spent senior year looking forward to getting out of there and into the real world. Still one thing you can't deny -- and several grads point it out in the comments as silly as the students might be behaving there, the education is excellent.

I'm no gun expert, but I have no reason to doubt Meir when he says that the gun that the Iranian president's bodyguard is packing is an Uzi. If it's true, how ironic....

I can post, but I get a blank screen when I try to find the blog.

UPDATE: It miraculously reappeared. Phew

UPDATE: And now it's gone again. This is annoying.

So I didn't think anything of it when I found my eight-year-old daughter yesterday watching the updated version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on television.

That was a mistake. She ended up in our bedroom with nightmares twice during the night and ended up camped out on the floor.

This afternoon I decided to talk about it with her in a sympathetic motherly way. So I sat her down and said I understood about not liking scary movies. "Honey, I didn't like being frightened either and I got nightmares, too, at your age. In fact, I still do, and that's why, unlike a lot of my friends, I avoid horror movies that are scary and bloody."

She paused and looked at me like I was an idiot. "MOM, there was no blood in that movie. There was chocolate."

Lisa's first installment of her adventures in Beirut is up on Pajamas.

And then Sandmonkey tells us how Hezbollah and co. reacted to the shocking news that a Canadian-Israeli dared to infiltrate their city. Surely Lisa had nothing but espionage and mayhem on her mind.

Hey, since I edited her stuff, if Lisa's a Zionist spy, does that make me her spymaster? Cool!

When I found Rinat Malkes' blog four years ago, she was a struggling new immigrant student from Brazil, fighting to learn Hebrew, and trying not to give up her journalism ambitions merely because she was transplanted. On her blog, we followed her as she left school, traded Jerusalem for Tel Aviv, worked for various television channels, was overworked, underpaid, and ultimately, found her niche as a foreign correspondent for Brazilian newspapers and television.

She spent the last few weeks in Lebanon a year after the war and now, in addition to sending the news to Brazil, she's sold her story and her video to Ynet (a preview is here - Hebrew link but you can watch the video) and Yediot Aharonot, who will be featuring her tommorow on their front page.

(After writing this, I tried to put in the link to her blog and to my surprise found that has evaporated -- don't know if she did this temporarily for safety reasons when she was in Lebanon, or if she's left the blogosphere permanently)

Meanwhile, her fellow-traveller and blogger, Lisa Goldman will be appearing on Israel's Channel 10 with her own sojourn to Lebanon complete with video.

And very, very soon (right Lisa?) she will be writing in English on Pajamas Media about her trip, submitting her copy to a very brilliant, perceptive, and modest editor.

UPDATE: There she was, cool as a cucumber, chatting with Miki and Yaacov, the anchors, from her Beirut balcony.

Because Email and blogging wasn't enough of a time suck....

I've sounded just like him when responding to the "you see, you-see disengagement was a huge mistake" right-wing crowd.

Yes it is terrifying that we have a Hamas state on our southern border but just imagine that 7,500 Israeli citizens were still there, with children needing to travel to school each day, Imagine their vulnerable expansive communities and the three military divisions deployed there to protect them and all the solitary pillboxes erected in the area and the long corridors that are used for security, the hitchhiking stations on the main roads, the synagogues, the cars, everything.

And that is – if you’ll forgive me – exactly what we said then. We have to distance ourselves from the Palestinians, to shut them off, to separate from their impeccable talent for doing the wrong thing. The disengagement – even with its failures and hardships – was the only thing that has allowed us now to carry on almost normally within an insane situation.

You tell 'em, Yair. Absolutely.

And moving to Israel was definitely a wrong turn. Can I please move to Mauritania, where I'd be a beauty queen?

....if you are going back to the same conference the next day. I spent the second day of the Blogference hiding my nametag from Dvorit Shargal, after I was told by Hanan Cohen that she'd read what I'd written about her here. Oops. (Her response in Hebrew to my charge that blogging shouldn't be taken too seriously is here)

I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner with some of the visiting Blogference Web celebrities. It was a lovely experience despite the fact that the restaurant featured my least favorite cuisine -- Ethiopian. The last time I had it was about 15 years ago in DC and it was just as bad as I remembered.

But the company was grand. I spent a lot of time talking to Micah Sifry, who brought his son along, as well as boy wonder Garrett Graff. And the Ninjas!

How cool!

The Ninjas are so well-known in Israel, that they had a fan meet-up. However, they said mournfully, that all of the fans were guys. Oops. The pitfalls of geek stardom.

Micah and Lisa and I were having the usual depressing conversation about the Middle East situation and I was giving my speech about how Israelis were feeling hopeless because we feel like we've tried everything -- tried compromising, tried giving back land, tried getting tough and fighting and bombing and no matter what we try, nothing seems to work.

And then one of the Ninjas (sorry guys, I forget who is who) broke in and said, "Ahhhh, but have you tried getting in a TIME MACHINE and going back in time and fixing all of the mistakes you made in the past!"

And I said, "Now there's our mistake. We've been searching and searching for an answer to the Middle East crisis but we've never ever asked a Ninja!"

Cristina: "Burke, did you hear those Iraqi and Jordanian doctors whispering? It sounds like they're planning....a TERRORIST attack!"

Burke: "Cristina! You, of all people engaging in racist stereotyping! The thought of respectable young westernized doctors...who are terrorists? That's the most outlandish, outrageous notion I've ever heard. Shame on you!"

Sometimes when cell phones don't work, it's a really GOOD thing....

The attempted London car bombings were meant to be detonated by calls to mobile phones in the two vehicles, but failed for technical reasons, according to a report.

The calls made on the phones allowed police to trace those behind last Friday's failed attacks, the Evening Standard said, without giving sources.

The phones were meant to set off blasts when they were called, but the devices failed to detonate the mixture of gas canisters and nails in the two Mercedes cars parked in London's entertainment district.

An Aussie goes "Jaywalking." Not fair to pin this all on Americans. There are stupid people everywhere, aren't there?

Well, I know it's summer vacation when I'm sitting at the Coffee Bean in the mall with my laptop, having deposited the kids at a movie to sneak in a few hours of work while they watch Shrek the Third.

When school is in session, I'm never at the mall.

As always, I'm amazed by the number of Israeli Arab women here -- in everything from completely western dress to full hijab. And everything in between -- a lot of hip young women with flowered headscarves, jeans and flip-flops. Younger, older, and nearly all looking very friendly, happy and non-threatening.

Utterly unlike London, where you feel the hateful glares from many traditionally-dressed Arabs on the street.

It's a whole different vibe here in the Holy Land. Maybe they are in a good mood becaue they are all really glad they're not in Gaza right now? Maybe, Next time I come to the mall, I'll have to bring my video camera and try to get some interviews.

As I drove into the mall parking lot, the guard peeked in my minivan with three kids and waved me in, saying, "Nope, you don't look like you're carrying any explosives, are you?" I couldn't get over how she said it so casually.

Bet there's no joking around like that in London these days. I can't get over the unfolding story about how these doctors cooked up a terror plot in the hospital they worked in.

It's like a twisted Hollywood pitch -- a "Grey's Anatomy" episode spun out of control.

No english title - video powered by Metacafe

No one is quite sure how an Israeli classic written by Naomi Shemer got transfered (and mildly mangled) by the Bulgarian American Idol competition. No matter the reason, it's gone viral across the Hebrew blogosphere.

For those who were curious why I was in Jewish mother worry mode a couple of days ago. Lisa spent a week in Lebanon.

I'd gotten some Email messages and chat from Lisa that made me want her to get the heck out of there and when I didn't hear for her for a while, I let my imagination get the best of me.

Ah, yes, those intrepid thrill-seeking journalists. I used to be one. Obviously, I'm a little jealous. I'd love to see Beirut. Damascus, too.

I told my ten-year-old son that, and I thought he'd be horrified at my desire to visit places he's learned are "the enemy" and he surprised me. He said he most wanted to see Baghdad.

Who knows...anything's possible. Maybe someday, we can barbecue with my Pajamas colleagues, Omar and Mohammed.

So here I sit blogging at a conference about blogging. Gee, I feel all Jeff Jarvis-y!

OK, Micha Sifry is speaking about the political influence of blogging, after he put a couple of marketing types in their place. The marketers were giving talks about measuring "trends" and "buzz" on blogs. Sifry basically started his speech by telling them that they were full of it and were basically doing damage control and good luck with figuring out how to manipulate bloggers into buying things. He asked anyone in the room who viewed themselves as "consumers" to raise their hand. Nobody did. Liars.

The title of his talk is "An Army of Davids: How Blogging is Changing Politics." The Instapundit should be flattered.

LATER -- Chutzpah! After he chose that title for his talk, while speaking the only examples of influential political blogs he gives -- were....Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and Talking Points Memo....Hello! How about a little respect for the guy who coined the phrase Army of Davids? Sheesh. Must a talk on politics neccessarily be so partisan!?

STILL LATER -- I shmoozed with Sifry, pointed out his faux pas and he looked appropriately ashamed of himself. I forgive him.

EVEN LATER -- Garrett Graff is speaking now. He's so YOUNG. Did he start blogging in the womb? I feel really old. He could be up there giving his Bar Mitzvah speech.

Oh, please! Graff just expressed concern over the fact that blogs mean people are only reading news they agree with. That's all well and good, but to prove his point, he just declared that 'readers of the Daily Kos "don't think that President Bush ever did a good thing in his life" and that readers of Instapundit and LGF "never think President Bush ever did anything wrong." '

I think he just proved his own point. He's obviously not actually reading Instapundit and LGF or he'd know his statement is ridiculous. He's just reading blogs that concur with his assumption that Glenn and Charles never disagree with the president.

Oh, well. At least he wrote nice things about Tel Aviv in his blog.

MUCH, MUCH, MUCH LATER: Some of these speakers are quite boring. I confess, I don't read the Hebrew blogosphere very often, so I can't judge the importance of Israeli journalist/blogger named Dvorit Shargal. But BOY, is she taking herself incredibly incredibly seriously. And if there's anything worse than a journalist taking themselves too seriously, it's bloggers taking themselves too seriously.

I love it when people are enthusiastic about changing the world through blogging, but not when they talk about it like it's a solemn mission.

It's WRITING, people - not piloting combat planes, not brain surgery, not police work, not even auto mechanics. WRITING. Get over yourselves.

(Liveblogged, then edited)

OK, I'm a worrier. I'm waiting for a fellow blogger to check in and let us know all is well. You know who you are....

You decide to treat them to an all-American pancake breakfast, and they decide to forgo the maple syrup and start spreading HUMMUS on their pancakes! UGH!