-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/6/_/1406/_/971233467/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com The Why 10/2/00 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Barry Chamish) First the good news. The State Ombudsman, Avigdor Raviv phoned this morning. He was to meet with the State Comptroller within an hour to discuss my request to investigate the Shamgar Commission. He assured me he was sympathetic to the request and that it did fall within the scope of the State Comptroller's duties. It's not approved yet but all you fine people turned the tide. Thank you, you did it! For the past seven years I have been trying to make people understand that outside forces are deliberately stirring up violence with the aim of sending foreign ie. UN troops to Jerusalem. This is the Vatican's desire, that Israeli sovereignty end on the Temple Mount, with the Vatican taking control of the holy sites and the UN in charge of security and diplomacy, yes, just like in Kosovo. That is happening now, with Sharon ordered to prepare the pretext for the UN takeover. I told over a dozen radio programs in August that the plan would be put in motion in late September, as the High Holidays started. Well, I was right. There is nothing spontaneous about our mini-war. It was designed from abroad. Note Albright and Chirac are cooking up the solution. Soon, very soon, the New World Order will arrive in Jerusalem with its army guided by our treacherous, corrupted leaders. I leave you with the latest World Affairs Brief, which puts things in perspective, a perspective sadly lacking in Israel. Barry Chamish WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF Sept 22, 2000 Copyright Joel Skousen. Quotations with attribution permitted: Cite source as Joel Skousen s World Affairs Brief. Website: http://www.joelskousen.com MY IMPRESSIONS OF ISRAEL: I recently returned from my fact-finding trip to the Middle East. What follows is my frank and personal assessment of the modern state of Israel, without the embellishments of rose-colored glasses. Millions of religious pilgrims trek to the "Holy Land" each year, skimming the surface of the country in almost total isolation from reality. Their guided tours, cushioned by air-conditioned tour buses and 5 star hotels, concentrate on what was, not what is. Churches dot the Judean landscape, each laying claim to a piece of the past that, with few exceptions, doesn t exist anymore. I would estimate that fully 80% of the "holy sites" are not the actual location where the original events occurred--which in most cases is virtually impossible to determine. The famed "Via Doloroso" tracing the presumed path of Jesus agonizing trek to Golgotha is merely an arbitrary walk through 14th century streets built on 40 foot deep rubble left over from the numerous destructions of Jerusalem s past. The few holy sites that are authentic are encumbered by heavy stone medieval churches with dark interiors that do not, in my opinion, impart any of the spiritual feeling of the original place. The Israeli government itself helps perpetuate the mystical, romantic illusions of the past, being acutely aware of the millions of dollars each year generated by religious tourism. The old city of Jerusalem is bathed in soft rosy artificial light at night to give tourists that romantic feeling they can write home about. But the selective rosy views only mask the chronic tension enveloping this relatively hostile land, a region bereft of natural beauty--except for about 5 weeks during the spring when wild flowers briefly bloom, and commercial photographers descend to work their art of selective embellishment that makes Israel look so enchanting in tourist brochures. So great is the contrast between promotion and reality that psychological clinics in Israel have a special term to describe the disillusionment that often affects religious pilgrims. It s called the "Jerusalem Syndrome" and refers to a chronic form of depression that can afflict those who cannot deal with the extreme contrast between holy and unholy. But with all that said, and in spite of the crass commercialization of religious antiquities, I must admit that one can still sense the God of Israel hovering over the land. I have no doubt that He intends to redeem Israel someday--and believe me, it needs redemption. LAND: I was struck by the steep ruggedness of terrain in the Judean and Samarian hill country. One doesn t get an accurate impression of the stark hostility of this terrain from photographs. Though not very high in altitude the hills of Israel are almost barren, extremely rocky and punctuated by deep ravines and gorges that make travel in central Israel a strain on man and machine. From Biblical stories and movies one gets the impression that trips to Bethlehem, Bethany or even Nazareth are relatively peaceful walks in the pastoral countryside. In reality, there is almost no greenery, only rocks and sand of a fairly bland hue-- completely lacking in the brilliant colors and shapes characteristic of the deserts in Utah and Arizona. Travel involves major descents into gorges often over a thousand feet in depth and climbing back up again repeatedly. It was also sad to note how little topsoil had been allowed to develop in the hill country. Although the rainfall is extremely sparse here, I attribute the main cause to extreme overgrazing. For centuries the Judean hills have been used to graze sheep and goats which have extracted the last once of nutrition from this land and not given anything back. Even today herds of sheep and goats, mostly Bedouin-Arab owned, forage on almost bare ground with no visible grass--only tiny bits of stubble. This destruction of the long term soil development is typical of many things I witnessed in Israel on Arab lands. There seems to be a politically correct notion that Arab tribal nomadic culture requires that they be left to age-old practices, no matter how damaging they are to the land agriculturally. The Israeli government is also under severe pressure internationally to let the Arabs do whatever they want. AGRICULTURE: There are two fertile plains in Israel, one along the Mediterranean coast and the other around the sea of Galilee and the Jordan river (which is more like a small creek). Both areas have been put into intensive cultivation by the Israelis. While there have been many comparisons to the Biblical adage of making the "desert blossom," the extreme efforts applied to maximize water resources in relatively poor soil have had many negative environmental effects. Water is extremely scarce, and thus Israel has been at the forefront in the development of drip irrigation systems that conserve the maximum amount of water. Large diversion projects of Jordan river water have, however, overtaxed the northern water resources in order to expand agriculture to the Negev desert to the south, where the sandy soil is much less fertile. Maximum utilization and reuse of fixed water supplies tends, over time, to concentrate contaminants and salt content, leading to the corruption of the aquifers. Both Israeli and Arab controlled agricultural areas pump large quantities of water out of the ground with deep wells. Overpumping from the aquifers has resulted in an increase in the saline content as water from the Mediterranean sea seeps in to replace it. Excessive chemical and fertilizer use in agriculture and industry has also led to extreme pollution levels in rivers and groundwater sources. Some rivers are actually toxic. The Israelis are reacting to the problem with some earnest. More strict environmental regulations are being implemented, but the Arab controlled areas are exempt for political reasons. There is also a growing movement in Israel to switch to organic farming. I visited a few Kibbutzim (collective farms) and Moshavim (cooperative farms) that are on the cutting edge of organic farming. Israel has developed a special fabric covering that allows them to grow vegetables free from insects inside a greenhouse type enclosure. It is more costly, so much of this elite produce goes to markets serving the orthodox Jewish communities world wide that require certified insect-free food. Israel has established a significant agricultural outreach to other nations who desire to implement the unique low-water farming techniques it has developed. The Arabs in Israel and neighboring Jordan have especially benefited from Israel s willingness to share their agricultural expertise. Jordan has been radically transformed into an agricultural Mecca due to the willingness of the late King Hussein to work with the Israelis rather than reject all contact as the more radical Arab factions have done. For Arabs living next door to productive Jewish agro projects, the lure of becoming productive farmers has in many cases overcome the innate hostility between the two cultures. I saw it with the Druse Arabs in the Golan heights and in the Arab areas in Galilee. In these areas orchards may not be as well kept as the Jewish farms but at least they are vastly more productive than before. Only in PLO controlled areas did I find such a strong hatred of everything Jewish that they refused to join in the new green wave of agro-prosperity. As one example of extreme resentment, young Arab radicals regularly destroy trees that the Jews plant as part of their national reforestation effort. This kind of hatred is an all too common byproduct of constant PLO propaganda and incitement to exterminate all Jews. ECONOMY: Most Americans don t realize that Israel has one of the most tightly controlled statist economies in the world. It is socialist in the extreme due to a combination of early Zionist collectivist fervor and the influence of Russian and Eastern European Marxists that came to Israel and formed the core of the ruling Labor Party. Israel s Histadrut, a kind of super labor union, controls every aspect of Israel s economic life--at least until recently. During the last decade, there has been a slow but persistent movement toward free-market reforms in Israel--not because the Jews have much of a free market philosophy in their heritage, but rather because they have a naturally competitive spirit and were forced to compete in a fast-paced international economy. When the government refused to implement needed reforms, there began a ground swell of rebellion in the 1980s and 90s against Israel s ponderous education, medical, tax and regulatory establishment. The more the government tried to suppress the gray and black markets, the greater the "brain drain" in Israel became as thousands emigrating to the US and Europe. The government s virtual monopoly on television was broken after private illegal cable services began sprouting up all over Israel. The Histadrut s monopoly on health care was broken by a persistent gray market for after-hours surgery performed by low paid doctors eager for extra money. Even Israel s ponderous "free" public education establishment is under attack as religious and private schools are being formed in ever-increasing numbers to supplement low quality public education. Often the best teachers can make more money teaching privately on the side than in their state controlled teaching jobs. In Israel, public money is doled out even to orthodox Jewish schools which tends to keep them tied to certain political parties which promote those subsidies in the Knesset. Dependency upon government is a chronic addiction in all of Israel, keeping taxes so high that Israel has to beg for American aid and loan guarantees every year, producing a very high ratio of foreign debt to GNP. Income taxes have been as high as 80% in modern Israel, so naturally, tax evasion is rampant. Recently, to help stem the growth of the underground tax-evading economy, income tax rates were reduced to below 50%, and new taxes imposed such as the 17% VAT tax. But I noticed that only established storefront businesses (mostly Jewish) collected the tax. In the Arab markets (part of the underground economy) I was never charged the VAT tax. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) Visit the Klub Konformist at Yahoo!: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/klubkonformist
